


the whole of the moon

by candydust



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aliens, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, individual tags in chapter notes, its like if the x-files and paul had a gay lovechild
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-07-22 23:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 89,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7458655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candydust/pseuds/candydust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hajime just wants to get his graveyard shift over, collect his paycheck, and go home. He doesn’t really want to get involved in a government plot involving aliens, a definite breach of - well, not human rights, but definitely some sort of rights - and a hot guy driving him halfway across the country. </p><p>But here he is. </p><p>Great.</p><p>*</p><p>“Are you going to tell me fucking aliens exist?” Hajime interrupts.</p><p>With a wince, Oikawa nods. “Basically. Yeah.”</p><p>“Nope.”</p><p>“Hey! I hadn’t finished telling you my emotional and incredibly tragic backstory!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the whole of the moon

**Author's Note:**

> okay so first off : kyushimii-yo.tumblr.com made the fantastic art, which is literally my entire life, so go follow her right now pls for more epic stuff like it 
> 
> second off : please like this i worked for like 7 hours on it kill me 
> 
> third off : this chapter is pretty mild. no violence, brief discussion of kind-of-not-really-torture which is mentioned for like... 0.54 seconds 
> 
> fourth off : please enjoy m8
> 
> finally off : updates as weekly as i can make them

With a sigh, he contemplates keeping his eyes open with some sort of pulley system for the third time in less than five minutes.

Hajime hates the graveyard shift as much as the next sleep-starved college senior, he really does, but his hatred for three in the morning is only matched by his love for money. And maybe, hopefully, sometime in the distant future, paying off his debts. That’s quite enough motivation to keep his eyes open of their own volition - sort of. 

“Thank you for shopping at SuperStore,” he says in a monotone, handing over the bag of shopping and giving the guy opposite him a wan smile. 

The guy, his eyes looking almost as heavy as Hajime’s feel, nods and hands over a bunch of crumpled bills. Hajime would guess he goes to the local college, based on the six-pack of energy drink and the mountain of junk food, but then he’s a familiar face at the store and nowhere else. But then, Hajime recognises all the local insomniacs that come out on a Wednesday. (Between midnight and six am, that is.) “See you next week,” he says.

“Yeah.” 

They have nothing else to say to each other - they never do, they’re both exhausted - and so Hajime watches him leave while humming tunelessly along to the classic eighties radio station he has on the little portable radio beside his ear.  _ You saw the whole of the moon.  _ Nobody else will come in until just after two, when the homeless guy that spends his time wandering around the freeway comes in to warm up and take advantage of the cheap coffee machine. Maybe,  _ maybe,  _ there’ll be a trucker or two to break the boredom, but the little gas station Hajime works at isn’t on a major road. 

Nope. It’ll be him and absolute classic eighties until Matsukawa comes to relieve him at five past six and he can go home. 

_ I saw flashes, but you saw the whole of the moon - _

Hajime reaches out and turns up the volume, watching with detached interest as the vibrations of the bass line knock a packet of sugary junk off the shelf.

He doesn’t even notice he’s falling asleep until he does, head resting on his folded arms, eyes pulled irresistibly shut by the lack of sleep he’s been getting recently and too many graveyard shifts. (Damn. And it’s only five minutes into the shift, too - a new low.)

The gas station is quiet. 

_ You saw the whole of the moon - _

_ The whole of the moon -  _

“- up, wake up, come on, please,  _ please  _ wake up before they get to me-”

Hajime blinks blearily up at the customer. “Th’nk you f’r shoppin’ at Sup’rSt’re,” he mumbles, and drops his head into his arms once more. “H’ve a nice day.”

“ _ Wake the fuck up, man!”  _

“Nice day,” Hajime repeats, snuggling further into the crook of his elbow. He wishes the customer would stop shaking his shoulders like that, and he wishes the customer would just fuck off and stop begging him to wake up, because Hajime really doesn’t want to. Why does everyone do their shopping in the dead hours, anyway? Who does that if they’re sane? He hates these homeless guys. And potheads. Hajime is not here to fulfill the crazed hallucinations of someone with enough drugs in their system to fund his entire college career. 

“Hide me,” hisses the customer. He sounds like he’s on the verge of tears, his grip on Hajime’s arm too tight, and there’s some chord in his voice that makes Hajime blink awake and lift his head. The customer sighs in relief. “Thank  _ fuck.  _ I thought you were a- nevermind, just hide me, man!”

“What the fuck?” Hajime asks, mind only just catching on. He looks up. 

The guy is tall and slender, his brown hair tousled, falling in his eyes and curling just under his ears. His eyes are wide with panic. He’s got a torn black t-shirt on, the logo peeling off so Hajime can’t read it, and a red-and-black plaid shirt tied around his shoulders along with a stuffed-full backpack. His jeans are ripped in so many places they’re practically shorts, and when Hajime peels the guy’s hands off his arms, he sees the nails chewed and short and bitten, the fingers long and slender. Pianist’s hands, his mom always said. 

“Hide me,” the guy practically  _ squeals.  _ “Hide me and I’ll buy up your whole shop, I will, just… fucking hide me. Five minutes. Then I’ll be gone.”

Hajime’s eyes narrow. “Have you stolen something? Are you gonna kill me?” He doesn’t look like a thief, or maybe that’s Hajime’s eyes playing tricks and deciding that hot people can’t possibly steal things. 

“No, but the people that are coming in  _ literally thirty seconds  _ have done both of those things - well they haven’t killed  _ you  _ in particular, but they killed - oh, oh my God, oh my God, they’re going to kill  _ me-” _

Reaching down with his left hand and keeping his right on the emergency call button of his mobile, Hajime comes to a split-second decision that definitely isn’t based in part on whether or not the guy looks attractive in the dim fluorescent lighting strips of the gas store roof. He lifts the barrier and points his thumb to the back room. “Get in there. Under the bottom shelf, there’s a loose tile. It’ll bring you into the basement, so long as you put the tile back once you’re in, and don’t make a sound.” 

“I’m in love with you,” the guy breathes, ducking under the counter and clutching Hajime’s hand sincerely. “Oh my God, I’m so dead - fuck,  _ here they come -”  _

He runs into the back room and Hajime hears the scrape of the loose tile being moved, the grunt of the guy lowering himself awkwardly down into the basement, and the tile being replaced. A glance out the window, still reeling from the weirdness, shows him three long, black cars. The lights are on in the inside, the doors opening, and Hajime caught a glimpse of a sharp red shoe before he thought he should go back to being a lazy college student working the late shift. 

No other cars, though. 

So what had the first guy arrived in?

Hajime turns up the absolute classic eighties radio by his side. Nothing like blaring old pop music to distract weird people in long black cars, right?  _ You came like a comet, blazing your trails-  _

The buzzer rings out, indicating someone has entered the store, and Hajime’s eye is drawn like a magnet to the three newcomers. 

For a start, they aren’t all that subtle. Only one of them is in the stereotypical black suit and sunglasses,  _ Men In Black  _ style, tie drawn close up to his wobbling neck, pale hair falling over the frames of his glasses so that he surely can’t see anything past the darkness and the strands of washed-out blonde. He’s the broadest of them, bringing up the rear, and Hajime’s seen enough awful B movies to know the bulge in the man’s pocket probably isn’t another wobble of fat. 

The second is a tall, stick-thin man with a flop of orange hair that falls straight to the nape of his neck, parted in the middle but brushed over one eye. His visible eye is cheap-contact-lens-red, which Hajime privately thinks is a bit much. His smile hangs crooked on his face, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a black and grey pinstripe suit. His feet, in off-white trainers, scuff along the floor and can’t keep to seem still, much like his dancing red eye. It skips all around the shop, never resting on one thing for more than a few minutes, 

“Hello,” says the first one. The scariest one. 

“Hi,” says Hajime. His throat feels suddenly dry. His eyes aren’t struggling to stay open any longer.

She wears a red silk blouse, the sort that a cheap country singer might wear, tied at the middle but buttoned up to her dark throat. A white ribbon is tied in a bow at the collar. Her shirt is tucked into a flared white skirt, dotted with red, that serves to make her tan legs go on for miles, and her dark eyes are ringed with sharp eyeliner seem to see right into Hajime’s soul. Chocolatey brown hair tumbles in ringlets over her shoulders, tied out of her face by a red ribbon knotted just below her ear. A subtle gem, sparkling red, hangs from her right earlobe.

Hajime realises he hasn’t breathed in several seconds. “Uh. What can I do for you today? Tonight? Uh… this morning?”

She laughs merrily. “Have you got any raspberry refills? And we’re looking for our friend.” 

It takes Hajime longer than he wants to admit to work out that she means e-cigarette refills, and he only figures it out when he sees the bulky one, the Suit, tapping at an e-cigarette hanging out of the top pocket of his jacket. “Oh. Uh, yeah.” 

_ Friend? The piano-hands guy?  _ Hajime hopes like hell he made it into the basement room, as his face transforming from tired to confused as soon as he turns to get the refill packet from the shelf behind him. “Raspberry refills,” he says as he hands it over and accepts two crisp, flat bills. 

“Thank you,” says the woman, smiling. “And - have you seen this guy? We were out clubbing and we got completely smashed -” the words sound wrong in her mouth, perfectly red lips moving open and shut “- I thought he might have landed here.” She holds out her phone. “Well?”

Hajime squints, faking confusion. He doesn’t know quite why he’s hiding the guy - he doesn’t  _ know  _ him - but something about the obvious lie in the Red’s voice and the panic in the guy’s voice (he’s not much more than a boy, really) makes Hajime lie. He shrugs at the photo, the guy with his hair brushed and his eyes half-closed, a white coat over a white shirt the only things he can see in the headshot. His eyes don’t look so tired, but they don’t look so lively, either. There isn’t as much grime on his cheeks, and he looks far healthier, but… less alive, somehow. He looks like he’s just been woken up and shoved into fancy clothes. “Can’t say I’ve seen him. You wanna try closer to the city? That’s usually where the clubbers end up. Here’s a bit out of the way.”

The second one, trainers-and-pinstripes guy, leans forward. His carroty hair flops further over his left eye, concealing it even more. “You sure?” He says with fake concern dripping off his voice. “We’re really concerned about him.”

“What’s his name? I’ll ask around,” Hajime says on impulse. “Most people that come in here keep an eye on the roads, after all.”

_ I saw flashes, but you saw the whole of the moon.  _

The red woman and Pinstripes exchange unreadable glances. Pinstripes grins. “Sure, man. You got a pen? I’ll write it down for you. And my number. Call us if you see him, yeah, and we’ll come pick him up.” 

Hajime wordlessly hands over pad and pen. He thinks he hears the back tiling scratch against the floor, and prays to whatever might be listening that the guy -  _ Hanamaki Akane  _ according to Pinstripes, although Hajime highly doubts that’s his real name - has the sense to stay hidden until the three black cars have gone. 

Once Pinstripes is done, Hajime peels the note off the pad and shoves it in his pocket to join the half-empty packets of gum and the balls of fluff. “Thanks, man. Hey - hope you find him.”

Red pulls an e-cigarette from a pocket of the white skirt, slotting the refill in neatly with red-painted nails. “I hope we do too, Iwaizumi-san. I hope we do.”

It takes Hajime three heart-stopping seconds to realise she read the name on his badge and she  _ isn’t  _ some sort of mind reading monster. . “Uh. Yeah. Good luck, then.”

After another searching look around the dim store, all three of them turn on their heel and stalk out of the shop. Hajime watches each one get into their car, and Red leads the procession out of the abandoned parking lot and back onto the road. They accelerate past the store and towards the city, and Hajime locks the door. 

He feels his heart going a thousand miles an hour. 

“Hey,” he calls into the back room. His voice only wobbles a little. “Are you there? They’ve gone, if they were the guys you were so scared of.”

There’s no sound. Figuring that he can leave his post, even at the busy time of ass o’clock in the morning, Hajime slips through the door and heaves up the loose tile in the corner, peering into the room below. The guy - Hanamaki Akane? Hajime  _ knows  _ that has to be a fake name - has turned on the light, the bare bulb hanging from the centre of the roof and making probably-not-Hanamaki look even paler than he did before. Gaunt, even.

“Are they gone?”

“Tell me what the fuck all that was about,” Hajime says in answer, his arms folded. “Are you Hanamaki Akane? Who the fuck were they? Why do they care so much? Who the hell wears trainers with a pinstripe suit? Why do I feel like I’ve just been threatened by the mafia?”

“I - have you got coffee and a car?” 

Hajime grits his teeth. “Just answer them.”

“I’ll come up now, and I swear I’ll answer everything if you just give me some coffee and food and hey, maybe a nicotine patch or something, just - they’re definitely gone?” He asks, shoving his hands up through the hole in the tiling. 

Hajime grabs on and pulls, bracing his foot against the wall. Jesus. For all the height of the guy, he hardly weighs anything, and Hajime ends up pulling too hard to send them both flying towards the back shelf, hitting his head on a box full of cans of soup. 

“Ow,” says the guy, blinking rather stupidly, his hands either side of Hajime’s head and his body half lying on top of Hajime. Hajime tries very, very hard not to blush. The guy doesn’t seem to bothered, not really trying to move from the compromising position. “Well, pleased to meet you, I guess. I’m Oikawa Tooru.”

“They called you Hanamaki Akane,” Hajime points out, hoping Oikawa Tooru can’t see the sudden flush on his cheeks. 

“Hana - they called me  _ Hanamaki?  _ That’s fucking rich, that - I’m going to find it before they do and  _ then  _ they’ll see -” 

Hajime takes advantage of the sudden change in mood, wriggling out from underneath Oikawa and standing up, offering his hand. There’s something about Oikawa that makes Hajime want to keep him in the store a little longer, even if he’s a stuttering, stammering, wild-eyed mess. “What’s the significance of that? And who the hell were those guys? And why were you running away?”

Oikawa leaves the back room before Hajime to make a beeline for the coffee machine by the door, humming along to the song on the radio.  _ I had flashes, you saw the plan…  _ “I’m Professor Oikawa Tooru, for want of a better title,” - that makes him snort with humorless laughter for some reason - “and I’ve been working with those guys for a few years when we saw something. They want to find the thing and they’re going to misuse it, I know they are, so I left. Last night. I took some things they need - the things in the backpack -” he shakes his shoulders, the bag on his back moving up and down as he shifts coffee granules from pot to styrofoam cup. “They want them back. They want to find the thing and now they want to find me and they - ouch!”

“Put the cup under the tap  _ before  _ you put the boiling water in,” says Hajime with an eyeroll. “Here, let me. The machine’s kind of temperamental.”

Oikawa slides onto the counter as Hajime bins the ruined cup and starts a new run. “I’m sorry for bursting in on you,” he says with his eyes closed. “I’d hitched a lift with some trucker, but we were at a rest stop a few miles back and they caught up to me, got him to tell them I was in the bathroom, so I ran for it when they were talking to him.”

“You ran from the gas station on the other road? That’s seven miles,” Hajime says. He knocks granules into two travel mugs instead of the styrofoam mugs, figuring that they’re both gonna need more coffee than the smaller cups will allow. 

“Seven miles? Oh.” Oikawa sounds unsurprised. Maybe he’s fitter than his skinny frame suggests.

Hajime turns on the water and starts peeling open tiny packets of milk. “Hey, you like sugar? Milk?”

“A teeny-tiny bit of milk.”

“So…” Hajime trails off, knocking the little packets into the two mugs and swapping out the mug under the water tap. “So - you’re a Professor? But you can’t be much older than me, right?”

“I’m twenty-one,” says Oikawa. He’s started picking at the little threads in one of the holes of his jeans, eyes focused on the strip of bare skin. 

Hajime hands him one of the travel mugs. “So’m I, but I’m still not out of college yet. What gives?”

“I did… a  _ different  _ sort of education. More specialised. A lot weirder. Hey, wow, this is good coffee.”

Hajime privately thinks that the coffee the SuperStore chain serves in its coffee machines looks like shit and doesn’t taste much better, but then, each to his own. “I’m not gonna ask if you don’t want to tell. Just… what did you find? In the bag, I mean… that those Definitely Not Mafia people want?”

Oikawa Tooru fixes him with a strangely intense stare, pulling the travel mug away from his bitten lips, “If I told you, they’d come back. They’ll come back anyway, but the sooner I’m gone, the less chance you’ll get mixed up in all this shit. Don’t - I can’t tell you any more than that, I swear, or they won’t ever let up after you, and I don’t wanna be responsible for that mess.”

“Fine. Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Hajime knocks off the machine with his thumb, sweeping a little stick into the mug and stirring it around to dissolve all the granules before tipping too much into his mouth and burning his tongue. He suspects Oikawa is exaggerating. Things like that don’t actually happen in real life - do they?

Oikawa giggles childishly. “That was stupid.” 

“I know,” Hajime snipes, sticking his tongue in the air to cool it down a little. “I know.”

There’s silence for a while. Hajime finds himself looking at Oikawa out of the corner of his eye, at Professor Oikawa Tooru - currently cross eyed trying to hold an undissolved coffee granule on the tip of his tongue. What could those people want that this guy has in that ratty backpack of his? That woman looked sleek and deadly dangerous, the sort of woman in the spy movies that can kill you six ways with just her lipstick and then do an elegant backflip out the window and away to safety. And something about Pinstripes rubbed Hajime the wrong way, with his darting red eye. And that suit guy had a  _ gun.   _

“Hey, didn’t anyone ever tell you staring is rude?” Oikawa asks playfully. 

_ I wandered out in the world for years, while you just stayed in your room - _

Hajime raises one eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have to stare if people weren’t so cryptic all the time.” He shuffles over to the radio to turn it up even more, looking back. “Hey, you don’t mind, do you - what?”

Oikawa is staring over his shoulder, eyes suddenly wide and horrified, mug halfway to his mouth, at something underneath the counter. “Get outside,” he says hoarsely. “ _ Now!”  _

“Oikawa, what the fu-”

“For the love of God, get out of the damned store and run as far away as you can!” Oikawa drops the mug of coffee, brown liquid spilling all over the tiles, glowing purple in the flourescent lighting. He vaults the countertop he’s perched on, grabbing three packets of cigarettes and a whole handful of nicotine patches from the shelf that Hajime had taken the raspberry refills from. “What are you waiting for?  _ Go!  _ I’ll be right behind you, I swear, I -  _ Go!”  _

Hajime will never be sure what makes him obey. Whether it’s the commanding tone of Oikawa’s voice or the raw fear he hears, something manages to kick his feet into action and he’s running for the door, which he only now remembers that he  _ locked,  _ he locked it after those three left - 

“ _ Why aren’t you gone?”  _

“Button under the counter unlocks the door!” Hajime yelps, heaving on the door handle with all his might. “Press it, it’ll open the door - what’s wrong with the shop?”

Oikawa must have pressed the button because the door flies open and Hajime tumbles out onto the hard asphalt. He stops himself with his palms, skin scraping along the grit, something hot and damp on his knee telling him that he’s probably ripped his only whole pair of jeans. Great. But there’s no time to think of that, as Oikawa comes running out of the store with his backpack bouncing on one shoulder, shouting something unintelligible. The side pockets are full to bursting with patches and cigarettes.

“Move it!” He’s shouting. “Move your ass, move it!”

Hajime grabs Oikawa’s flailing wrist, pulling him away from the store and towards his dusty red Ford Focus. “That’s my car, get in and then tell me what the  _ fuck  _ is going on-”

“They - I can’t believe they - did - I’m going to  _ end them all  _ -” Oikawa flings himself into the passenger seat. “Get  _ in,  _ quickly!”

Hajime turns to look at the empty store, realising that he’s just bolted his workplace for not much reason at all with a shady guy that may or may not be in the mafia. Or something. “What’s going on?”

“No time to-”

And - 

The explosion blows Hajime backwards, throwing him to the grassy verge next to the road. His face burns like he’s standing too close to a massive bonfire, and the noise makes his ears pop unpleasantly. He thinks he hears Oikawa yelling, maybe, but 

But 

Pieces of SuperStore begin to rain down around him. A curled up packet of chips, scorched brown, lands beside his ear with the acrid smell of burning plastic. A hard piece of plaster, maybe a wall, lands on the roof of Hajime’s car and lies there smouldering.

Hajime’s ears begin to ring. His arm hurts. An ashy spark lands on his knee. 

“Oh my God, are you-” Oikawa begins to get out of the car. Hajime’s vision swims with dizziness as he tries to focus, so instead he zones in on the curl of hair sticking out of Oikawa’s messy mop, and tries to focus.

“Get the fuck back in,” Hajime snarls, pushing himself to his feet. Bits of his livelihood are landing in his hair, all around him, as he wobbles shakily to the car, but he can’t bring himself to react to it. His fucking workplace just exploded, and all he can think about is how the stranger beside him looks good in the glowing yellow of the burning store. 

“I’m sorry,” says Oikawa quietly. “That was probably my fault.”

Hajime says nothing. He breathes once - a cracked bottle of Mountain Dew lands on the bonnet, empty of liquid, scorched at the cap - and presses in the clutch, moving into gear and accelerating into the road. 

He felt tired a couple of minutes ago. Maybe. 

A couple of minutes ago he was drinking coffee with a hot guy, not-really-talking about the people with the stupid costumes, wondering when Matsukawa would come along and replace him, wondering how soon he’d be able to go back to sleep on his ripped old couch. 

Hajime turns on the radio.

_ Every precious dream and vision underneath the stars - _

“I am sorry,” repeats Oikawa. 

“I didn’t think she’d do that,” Oikawa says. 

“They’re crazy. I didn’t mean for them to try that,” Oikawa continues. 

Hajime drives steadily, not bothering with the cruise control. The bottle of Mountain Dew skips backwards with the momentum, flies up the windscreen, and bounces away onto the road behind them. 

“Are you going into the city?” Oikawa asks. 

Hajime clears his throat. His knuckles are white, gripping on the steering wheel. “Yeah. Where do you need to go?”

“Don’t go to the city. Just… trust me here, and turn around. Go the other way and nothing else will get blown up, right?” Oikawa leans back in the seat, picking at the holes in his jeans again. “The city is where  _ they  _ went, and  _ they…  _ Takaki likes to blow things up. A lot. Turn around. Please.”

Hajime doesn’t agree or disagree. He just pulls over, executes a completely illegal and also completely unseen u-turn, and starts driving the opposite direction to where the three black cars took off. 

_ You came like a comet, blazing your trails -  _

Silence, blessed silence, reigns for… oh, maybe ten minutes. 

“Hey… hey, man, I think I should drive. You’re kind of falling asleep.”

Hajime stops. Gets out. Walks around to Oikawa’s side. Waits, arms folded, for Oikawa to get out, and slides into the recently-vacated seat. Oikawa has tipped it back slightly, but Hajime reaches down and pushes it as down as it will go until it’s almost horizontal. 

He doesn’t really think about anything.

“What’s your name?” Oikawa asks quietly when they’re back on the freeway going twenty miles over the limit. Oikawa has the cruise on, and uses one hand to steer, the other to fiddle with the radio knob. Apparently the classic eighties is the only good thing on, because he leaves it at that, slightly quieter than Hajime had it.

_ Too high, too far, too soon -  _

Hajime grumbles. He’s almost asleep, his eyelids too heavy for his skull. “Why do you wanna know?”

“I guess if we’re both on the run from super-secret government agent people, it makes sense to know each other’s names, right?” Oikawa smiles a little wanly. 

“Iwaizumi Hajime,” says Hajime. “I’m going to sleep.”

_ You saw the whole of the moon. _

***

When Hajime wakes up, for a moment he assumes he just passed out in his car after getting out of the SuperStore. It takes him a while to wake up fully, to smell the cigarette smoke overtaking the vanilla air freshener he got as a gift with his last visit to the garage, to see the long fingers -  _ pianist’s hands -  _  wrapped around the gearstick, to look out the window and see unfamiliar streets whipping by. 

“Where are we?” Hajime asks blearily. 

“Oh, Iwa-chan, you’re awake!”

So apparently Oikawa has managed to get some sleep, too. That can be the only explanation for the sudden chirp in his voice. “What the fuck is an Iwa-chan? What time is it?”

Oikawa looks down at Hajime, beaming, the purple shadows under his brown eyes only slightly faded. “You the fuck is Iwa-chan, that’s what, and it’s almost three in the morning.”

Hajime pushes the seat back up into general seat-shape, rubbing his eyes and scowling out at the passing houses, lit by flickering street-lamps. “So are you going to tell me why you’ve kidnapped me and my work is exploded? Boom?”

“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you, to be honest,” says Oikawa, eyes on the road sign ahead of them. He still has that cheery note to his voice, and it inexplicably makes Hajime kind of want to punch him a lot. 

Hajime glowers at the backpack by his feet. “Just tell me, right, and then I’ll tell you if I believe you or not. Go on.”

Oikawa takes a deep breath. “Fine. Me and those three were the lead investigators into my life, if you get my meaning.”

Hajime doesn’t, but he nods anyway. He gets the sinking feeling an emotional backstory is rearing its ugly head, but now he’s started Oikawa he can hardly stop him. 

“Back about ten years ago, my older sister, Miyu, went missing in the middle of the night. It was a big deal. There were police cars parked in my drive pretty much all the time for, like, a year and a bit afterwards, and the thing is - I’d seen her disappear. But nobody believed some kid that a big beeping machine had come down and these three things, gross oozy things, came out of it. Like, some cartoon beepy things. Grey slime everywhere. They wanted to believe it was a guy with a white van and some candy, not… not characters from an awful anime.”

Oikawa takes a break to look down at Hajime, test his reactions. Hajime keeps his face as neutral as he can. (Fucking  _ aliens?)  _

“Okay. Yeah, so, we’d been looking for my rabbits, me and Miyu,‘cause they kept escaping and I was sort of a giant crybaby. And I was looking for them in the bushes and she was in the middle of the garden calling their names, and then the grey slimey things came down in the beepy thing. The aliens came down in the ship.” Even  _ he  _ laughs at how stupid it sounds, but the laugh is hollow and empty.

“Are you going to tell me fucking aliens exist?” Hajime interrupts. 

With a wince, Oikawa nods. “Basically. Yeah.”

“Nope.”

“Hey! I hadn’t finished telling you my emotional and incredibly tragic backstory!”

“If you kidnapped me to be the fucking Scully to your Mulder, just let me out here. You can even keep the car, if you want, just let me out before this all gets too weird.” Hajime opens the window a little to let some of the smoke escape, which trails from Oikawa’s cigarette and collects at the roof of the car. He’s choking a little bit on the fumes, but like hell is he going to let Oikawa know that. 

“Unfair!” Oikawa holds one finger in the air, puffing more smoke out his own window, “I wasn’t in the FBI. I’m not in the FBI.”

“So who the hell were those guys and why did they blow the store up? And why are we in a city I’ve  _ never even been to? _ And-”

“Iwa-chan, chill out for three seconds - oh, hey, fuck you, I was gonna go in there-” Oikawa thumps the car horn at the driver that cuts in front of him, scowling childishly. “Okay. What did you want to know? Oh, yeah - right, okay. So, two years after Miyu went missing, I was bouncing around therapists ‘cause they all thought I was batshit crazy for telling them all aliens had kidnapped her. Right. They all banged on about how I was repressing my real memories with something I’d seen on TV because what had actually happened had fucked me up so bad I couldn’t even bear to have it in my memories, or something. And I came out of one of them and she was there.”

“The red one.”

“The red one. And her brother.”

“Pinstripes?”

Oikawa barks out a laugh. “Yeah, Pinstripes, sure. The other one didn’t come along ‘till later.”

“Suit.”

“Yep,” Oikawa grins at his reflection in the wing mirror, “Red and Pinstripes and Suit. I like it, Iwa-chan. Gives them an air of mystique.”

“So,” prompts Hajime, “Red was waiting for you…?”

“Yeah. She’s a couple years older, maybe twenty-five… she was fifteen, then, and so was Pinstripes. They’re twins, not that you’d believe it, and they told me their triplet had been kidnapped by grey oozey slimey things.”

“That’s a lie,” Hajime declares. He’s kind of hooked on the story, to his own disgust.

“Well,  _ yeah,  _ in hindsight, but little baby Tooru was gullible.” Oikawa turns into a ratty side street, graffiti covering the walls, a dumpster knocked over with its contents spilling all over the road. “So I went, ‘ _ oh my god, really?’  _ and got in the black limousine version of the white van.”

“Alien triplet was the candy, right, and you were a stupid fucking kid,” translates Hajime for him. “And?”

“We started investigating strange encounters across the country. I got pulled out of school, and Red got whoever our employers were to convince my parents I was attending this posh boarding school across the country on a scholarship. It was pretty epic, up until three weeks ago, I guess. Our end goal, sort of, was always going to be  _ meeting  _ an alien. Or, y’know, an otherworldly thing. At least, that’s what I’d been told.  thought it was because those two wanted to find their triplet, and obviously I wanted to do it to get Miyu back. And Takaki - I mean, Suit… eh. I guess he’s in it for the money.”

“They fucked you over,” Hajime says softly.

“They fucked me over,” Oikawa agrees. “I got all my college credits early, of course, and when I was sixteen I really wanted to be a Professor. I was on a Pokemon binge. So I got to be one - Professor of Astrobiology, Oikawa Tooru. But three weeks ago I was hunting around the computer system and I found records of these emails Hatsu - um, Red, had sent around to whoever employs - employed - me. Us.”

Hajime stays silent. Oikawa stops at a traffic light, drumming his fingers against the wheel. 

“They didn’t want to find their triplet, or my sister, or anything like that. They’re just capitalizing government assholes, I guess - they had a specimen back in the seventies, and they kept it captive for a decade and then vivisected it.”

The car moves again. Hajime notices that his jaw has dropped open, and closes it. “They  _ vivisected  _ an alien?”

Oikawa laughs humorlessly. “Yup. No anaesthetic. I watched the video - it’s pretty horrific. I threw up, like, twice. And just a month ago, I found a tracker that would locate the site of a landing ten years ago. I think - they think, too - that there might still be life there, life that could lead me to getting Miyu back.”

“And they want to find the site so that they can capture an-” Hajime stumbles over the word ‘alien’ - “A creature and, what, experiment on it?” 

Sighing, Oikawa nods. “And more. Apparently there’s some super-secret plan to harness alien technology and use it to enter the political sphere of the galaxy, guns-blazing style. Killing people. I - that’s fucked up, right? So I confronted them, and they told me if I quit now they were going to kill me. So I stole the tracker and a couple of old maps, and ran for it.”

“Three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks ago.”

“And then you came into my store and then some more people came into my store and now I don’t have a store anymore,” Hajime completes the story just as Oikawa parks (in a non-parking zone, car half on the sidewalk and half hanging off, but what the hell.)

Oikawa grins. “Ah, sorry about that, Iwa-chan.” Gone is the serious face and the sadness - back is the bouncy Oikawa, apparently, lighting another cigarette and tossing the stub of the last one down to the road. He reaches down to Hajime’s feet and swings the backpack onto one shoulder.

“So where are we?” Hajime gets out of the car and closes the door with his heel. “Hey - lock it.”

“I know someone here that’ll let us crash for a couple of days and maybe feed us, because I don’t know how much money you have, but I have nothing,” Oikawa says, thumbing the lock on the car keys and tossing them to Hajime. 

Hajime frowns. “So you’ve decided I’m coming with you, then.”

“I don’t think it would be safe for Iwa-chan to leave my side!” Oikawa says in a high falsetto. He grins and bounces over to a set of iron steps leading up the wall of a cheap building, more spray paint than Hajime’s ever seen in his life covering every inch of the brickwork. “On the seventh floor. I think. I don’t think the address has changed, anyway, but this is a bitch of a climb. My knees always ache afterwards. You coming?” 

Really, Hajime thinks wryly, setting off after Oikawa, he has no choice. 

The aftermath of rain has made the iron staircase slippery and several times Oikawa’s feet go from under him. He squeaks and grabs Hajime’s arm, laughing with little embarrassment. 

“You’re such a… ugh. Shittykawa,” Hajime grumbles, but he doesn’t move Oikawa’s arm.

The door at the top of the stairs is painted green and peeling, little plastic numbers telling whoever cares enough that this is apartment 7E. The doorbell buzzer is covered in green fuzz, water dripping off the button, so Oikawa doesn’t bother using it. 

“Hey! He-ey!” He shouts, knocking on the door with one fist, his other hand still on Hajime’s. “Hey!”

“Fuck off!” Someone calls from inside, sounding sleepy. 

Sleepy, because it’s four in the morning. Hajime winces. 

“No! We’re being  _ hunted  _ by  _ government agents,  _ oh my God, open the door-”

The door flies open to reveal a scowling boy, maybe a few years younger than Hajime, wearing pyjama pants and an overlarge t-shirt. His black hair is mussed with bedhead, his blue eyes bleary and sleepy, staring daggers at Oikawa. “Why the  _ fuck _ are you here.”

“Tobio-chan!” Oikawa sings. “Good to see you again!” 

 


	2. withheld information

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so most of this chapter doesn't make sense, and is mostly set-up for the rest of the story, and so is boring as f u c k and if you keep reading after this, honestly i applaud you
> 
> no warnings i don't think??

‘Tobio-chan’ looks between Hajime and Oikawa, and evidently comes to some sort of conclusion. His eyes narrow and he steps back a little, glaring daggers at Oikawa. “I don’t want to deal with this. Go away.”

Oikawa, undeterred, grins. “Tobio-chan, we’re  _ friends,  _ right? Something’s come up and, long story short, Iwa-chan here has had his gas station blown up and also Hatsu and Hikaru kind of want to kill me and maybe kill Iwa-chan here, I’m not sure about him yet, and we need a place to crash. For a night. Maybe.” Oikawa cocks his hip, one arm crooked, thumb hooked into his belt loop and his other arm still tucked into Hajime’s. Hajime  _ really _ doesn’t fancy his chances staying with this guy for the rest of the night, if his evil eye and Oikawa’s abrasive personality are anything to go by.

‘Tobio-chan’ looks at Hajime, apparently assuming that he’s the sensible one of the newly formed duo. “I’m Kageyama Tobio. Sorry about him. Hatsu and Hikaru? Hah. I told you so, Oikawa-san, I told you way back with Hina-”

“Tobio-chan is very awkward,” Oikawa stage-whispers to Hajime, interrupting Kageyama with a stunning smile. “He doesn’t know how to interact with people. Or invite them in.”

Kageyama flushes red and sighs. “Don’t explain anything, will you? Fu- come in, then. Crash on the couch, if you want to. Don’t have a spare room, but you’re explaining yourself when it isn't four fucking am. I’m going back to bed. Lock the door behind you.”

He stomps back into the flat, but leaves the door half-open.

Hajime looks at Oikawa, eyebrow raised. “A friend? Someone that would let us crash for a few days? Do you have anyone in your life that isn’t constantly a little pissed off at you?”

“Shut up, Iwa-chan,” says Oikawa without heat. “I call the comfy couch. You can get the stiff one that hurts your neck, just for that remark _.  _ Hah! Punishment!”

“I get the feeling most people you call your friends just put up with you, y’know,” Hajime says dryly, following Oikawa inside because there really isn’t anything else he can do. Oikawa moves like he owns the place, shrugging the plaid shirt off his shoulders and throwing it over the side of a table. He maneuvers himself through the messy room in the darkness with ease - Hajime trips over a pile of books, a half-empty bowl of cereal, and a pile of bright woolly sweaters before Oikawa apparently takes pity on him and shoves him into a couch. His back hits something, presumably a TV remote.

“Ow.”

“You were tripping around all over the place, and Tobio-chan gets mad if he doesn’t get his eight hours,” Oikawa says. 

Hajime is just about to reply when Oikawa himself lands on top of him, shoving his shoulders down into the soft cushions and whipping a blanket off the floor. “Hey, what are you -”

“I pushed you onto the comfortable couch,” Oikawa doesn’t-really-explain, hushed, his breath warm against Hajime’s neck as he throws the blanket over them both. “And I don’t want to get up again, and the other couch hurts my neck. Go to sleep, Iwa-chan.”

“Huh. Okay.” Hajime unfolds his left arm, trying to make Oikawa more comfortable, and Oikawa wriggles sideways a little - “Christ, you’re too tall,” mumbles Hajime - “Move  _ over,  _ Iwa-chan,” Oikawa mutters - and somehow they end up with Oikawa’s arms around Hajime’s waist and Hajime’s head tucked into the crook of his neck. 

“Um.”

“Don’t  _ move,  _ you idiot,” Hajime grunts, exhaustion suddenly overwhelming. “I’m comfortable. Shut the fuck up and go to sleep.”

“Oh.”

Oikawa sighs once more against the crown of Hajime’s head, and Hajime’s last thought before falling asleep is that this is the most comfortable he’s been in a long while. 

He doesn’t dream.

***

“We’re the kids in America! Wo-ah!” 

Hajime’s head hurts. 

“We’re the kids in America! Wo-ah!”

He’s cold. He remembers falling asleep warm, and now all of one side freezes like someone’s just taken away a hot-water bottle or something. 

“Everybody live for the music go round!”

Hajime gives up on the sleeping thing, figuring that between the cold and the pulsing synthesised sounds coming from the radio, loud enough to make his teeth shake with the lower notes, he’s not going to get back to sleep any time soon. He cracks his eyes open - surely neither Oikawa nor that guy from last night, Kageyama, would listen to such horrifically awful music? This sounds like the classic eighties stuff that Hajime loves to listen to in the store. 

As it turns out, it isn’t Oikawa. It isn’t Kageyama, either. 

In the daylight, Hajime sees that the flat is far more open than he thought. The kitchen and living space are mashed into one, and the couch where he and Oikawa spent the night is stretched out in the same room as the kitchen worktops. The music comes from a tiny little analog radio perched precariously on top of the tiny fridge, and someone sings aloud loudly, happily, and quite tunefully. 

A tiny ginger head dances around behind the table. There’s a spatula waving in the air - “Wo-ah!” - and, as Hajime watches, the tiny ginger head hops around the table to reveal a tiny, tiny person wearing nothing but pyjama pants hitched up to the knees and a small white binder. Odd socks, too - one an ankle with kittens on it, the other a knee-high pink sock with knobbles in it down to the ankles anyway _. _  “We’re the kids in America! Wo-ah!” The guy - Hajime assumes he’s a guy - throws his hands in the air, droplets of water falling from the spatula, before spinning around, grabbing a salt shaker, and starting to shake it to the beat into a frying pan sizzling on the hob.

“Hey, where’s Oikawa?” Hajime asks, sitting up. A horribly pink crocheted blanket falls off his shoulders, and as he stands he feels the uncomfortable sensation of having slept in his work clothes. And he didn’t brush his teeth last night. Gross. He feels sort of like he should have been drinking. 

The kid whips around. “America! What? Who-” He points the spatula at Hajime threateningly. “I should warn you that I have hit people with this before! And it hurt! I - oh, it’s you.”

“Uh… hi, there. Okay, I surrender, but where’s Oikawa? Y’know. Stupid hair. Bouncy. Don’t give him coffee.” Hajime raises his hands, smiling a little. 

The kid relaxes and tosses the spatula into the frying pan. Something pops. “You’re awake! I’m Hinata Shouyou, I - hey, how do you like your eggs? I like them runny, but Tobio likes them hard, and we always fight about it, and when Oikawa-san comes around he just chooses whatever egg looks the roundest. Say runny, c’mon, and then I can officially tell Tobio to fuck off.”

“What?”

“Eggs. Runny? Oikawa-san left a few minutes ago. He said he was going to get supplies-” Hinata Shouyou crooks air quotes around the last word. “Tobio is still asleep. You arrived super early, you know that? What got you involved? Are you new?”

“Runny, I guess. And I’m not involved, I’m just here because Oikawa indirectly blew up my store,” Hajime says hurriedly.  _ Involved in what? New to what? _

Hinata smiles. It takes over his whole face, a bright, happy grin. “Hah! I’m going to tell Tobio to fuck off when he wakes up. Wow, so you  _ are  _ new. Well, welcome to the shitfest, Iwaizumi-san!”

“Thanks. I think.” Hajime sits down on the couch, watching Hinata bounce around. The pyjama pants look familiar, and he realises that they’re the same pair Kageyama was wearing last night when he answered the door to them. 

_ Ohhh.  _

_ Oh. That… that makes sense.  _

“We’re the kids in America! Wo-ah - oh, do you mind the singing?” Hinata asks, pointing at the radio. His eyes suddenly widen and he looks down at himself. “Ah, fuck, I forgot to put a shirt on. Uh. You don’t mind the-” he waves the spatula at his binder, then squeaks when hot water lands on his bare skin.

Hajime barely contains a snort of laughter. “Don’t mind either of them, but go put a shirt on if you’re cold.”

“It’s warm, here,” Hinata says doubtfully, but he scurries into the other room nonetheless and returns pulling a yellow shirt over his head. The slogan, in bright, offensive green, says  _ fight for the future of the mutant worms.  _ Hajime figures it’s some movie reference, albeit a bizarre one. 

Warm? Hajime rubs the back of his neck. So maybe he  _ had  _ been cuddled a little too close to Oikawa last night, then. Maybe Oikawa just leeches heat. 

“Oikawa-san will be back soon,” Hinata continues as though there’s been no break in the conversation, “He always comes back right before I serve the breakfast.”

As if on cue, Hajime hears something clanking outside the walls, and remembers the shaky iron staircase. Doesn’t this place have an elevator? And this must be Oikawa, back from getting what Hinata so sarcastically referred to as  _ supplies.  _ Hajime doesn’t really know what he’s meant to assume from that - is it going to be super-secret alien guns and magical technology as yet unknown to mankind, or is it going to be frozen pizzas and cereal bars?

Hinata laughs when they hear Oikawa swearing through the wall. “I think he locked the door behind him. Hey! Oikawa-san! Door’s locked!”

“Why the fuck is it locked?” Oikawa whines. There’s the clatter of a key being pushed roughly into the lock, and Oikawa almost falls into the flat, three heavy shopping bags in his hands and his backpack on his shoulders, rather fatter than it was last night - shopping spills out of two of the bags, cans and bottles and packages of travel food and a little green first aid kit. 

“The  _ floor,”  _ Hinata says mournfully. “And I’d just cleaned it yesterday, too.”

Hajime privately thinks that all the piles of books and clothes and empty plates and cups doesn’t really scream  _ just cleaned yesterday,  _ but maybe Hinata and Kageyama just make a mess really (really) fast. Oikawa’s spillages, though, have made the floor basically impossible to cross without stepping on something, and as Hajime and Hinata walk on tip-toe to help pick everything up, Hajime feels as though he’s walking on nails. (It turns out to be a spilled package of hairpins, so he isn’t that far from the truth.)

“Here,” Oikawa says, pushing a plastic container towards Hajime. It turns out to be a  _ Klean Kit _ , holding a tiny plastic tube of toothpaste, a folding toothbrush, a brittle plastic comb, a razor, and a squeezing packet of shaving cream. 

“I take everything back about just putting up with you, ‘cause right now I could  _ kiss you,”  _ Hajime says, staring at the toothbrush with indecent longing. Man, does his mouth feel gross. He never really appreciated how nice it was to have mint on his breath until it was gone, and now all he needs is a change of clothes. 

Oikawa grins. Hinata looks between the two of them, so fast he must get whiplash, and beams. (Hajime misses the whole interaction, staring with lovestruck eyes at the Klean Kit.)

Hinata, though, quickly moves into giving orders. “Oikawa-san, go get changed here. Iwaizumi-san, the bathroom is that door on the left. I’ll go wake Tobio and breakfast’ll be on the table in five, so first come, first served. Go on!”

“Iwa-chan, catch!” Oikawa calls, throwing the third shopping bag at Hajime, who narrowly grabs it. 

“What’s - oh, man, I really do love you,” he says as he peers into the bag. A change of clothes. Not the ugly yellow SuperStore uniform, but actual  _ clothes.  _

Oikawa grins again. “Go on into the bathroom. Chibi-chan can keep me company ‘till you get out, right, all unscruffed. My Iwa-mountain-man, replaced with a civilized being.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Hajime mumbles, smiling at the cheery Hinata. “I’ll be out in five.” 

The bathroom is the same mess that the rest of the flat is - the walls are tile, cracked through and splattered in places with what looks like red paint, and there are a grand total of  _ ten  _ different toothbrushes lying across the radiator and in the plastic cup by the sink. Hajime locks the door behind him and tips up the bag with the clothes in on its end, spilling his new outfit over the floor. (Well. The floor itself is hidden under a carpet of multicoloured towels.)

First things first. 

“I’m using the shower!” Hajime yells through the door. (He’s stupidly excited about being  _ clean.)  _

“Okay! Breakfast in five!” Hinata calls back. 

Hajime could  _ cry  _ when he steps under the hot water for the first time. He feels like the grime and the soot and the shock of the last night is covering him like another layer of dirt that can be just washed away. He loves being clean. He loves smelling of - he checks the bottle - peachy apricot, apparently. Peachy apricot definitely beats eau de exploded workplace, anyway.

Oikawa hasn’t bought him new jeans, Hajime discovers as he sorts through the soft cotton of the new stuff and the hard polyester of his uniform.  _ Ew.  _ He shrugs and shrugs on the old ones, frowning at the hole at the knee and the dried blood around the frayed edge of the tear. Did that happen last night? Last night is kind of a blur, if he’s honest, a blur of sound and Oikawa and those three threatening definitely-not-X-Files people. 

Socks. 

God, Hajime loves new socks. 

Shoes. The sort of cheap canvas ones you can get for almost nothing, but so much better than Hajime’s rubber-soled black ones, which are peeling at the heel. 

A soft white t-shirt with a bear on the front, eyes wide and red and very demonic. Oikawa has a weird taste in clothes, and also a really bad eye for sizing, as Hajime discovers when he pulls it over his head and feels the slight tightness across his shoulders. (At least it isn’t too short for him. He doesn’t really want to wear a crop top.) 

Hajime shoves the toothpaste and toothbrush in his pocket, his thumb brushing against a scrumpled piece of paper. Probably his shopping list from a lifetime ago when he was in a world where aliens didn’t exist and all he wanted was to write his English paper and decide whether to get an Indian or a pizza for dinner.

He shaves. 

When he comes out, feeling ridiculously buoyant just from being  _ clean,  _ a rubbery piece of fried egg narrowly misses hitting him in the face, and he narrows his eyes at who he  _ knows  _ is the culprit. 

Oikawa, also changed, holds the rest of his egg in his hand with absolutely no remorse. “Lookin’ good, Iwa-chan.”

“I will fucking kill you,” Hajime growls, pacing over and taking the seat that Hinata has pulled out for him. “If you get egg on me, I’ll end you.”

Kageyama is awake and sitting on Hinata’s other side, upending slices of toast and dipping them into the yolk of his runny egg. “Morning, Iwaizumi-san.”

“Morning.” Hajime resists from tipping the entire plate of food into his mouth - barely - and instead starts spreading far too much butter over his own slice of toast.

It’s then that he really  _ notices  _ Oikawa. 

Oikawa has balanced a grey fedora on his head, and tucked on top of his forehead, just under the brim, are what look like the sort of glasses  _ Harry Potter  _ wears in those films. His shirt is white with a picture of a human face on it and the caption  _ I want to believe,  _ and he looks far too proud of this when he catches Hajime looking. “You like it?”

“You’re a meme,” Hajime says flatly, and goes back to eating his eggs. He flatly ignores the voice in the back of his head telling him how good Oikawa looks in those glasses, even with the awful fedora. Which definitely doesn’t look good. At all. 

God, he loves food.

And being clean. 

“So,” Hinata says, his plate so clean it hardly looks like there was any food on it at all, “At least tell us what’s going on this time instead of taking off.” The tone changes immediately then; Hajime glances over at Oikawa, who looks shifty.

“Or I’ll call Hatsu and we can get this whole thing sorted out the way  _ she  _ wants it,” Kageyama finishes in a way that is definitely, one-hundred-percent, one of the scariest threats Hajime has ever heard. 

Oikawa sighs. “Tobio-chan, you wouldn’t dare. This hurts me, the manipulation from my dearest and most successful little padawan learners-”

“ _ Oikawa,  _ holy fuck, just tell them what they want to know,” Hajime interrupts. Under the table he swings his foot and is satisfied when he feels it connect with Oikawa’s shin. “I mean, it can’t hurt, can it, if you can tell  _ me  _ about it.”

Kageyama grins like he knows something Hajime doesn’t. “Iwaizumi-san is right. C’mon, then.”

With a massive sigh, Oikawa kicks Hajime back under the table. “It’s a conspiracy, that’s what, you guys conspiring against me. Okay. So, you two know about Miyu, yadda yadda…” Hinata and Kageyama nod. “Right. Hatsu and Hikaru, it turns out, don’t want peaceful harmony between worlds.”

“We all fuckin’ know that already, remember the-,” Hinata says with a mouthful of egg, stopping hurriedly. Hajime feels another leg kick under the table, and looks at Kageyama’s glaring face. Hm.

Oikawa continues as if nobody had interrupted. “I don’t think they suspect anything about  _ us,  _ or any of the others, but they’ll probably come calling in a few days. They’re not super happy about me fucking off, and they tried to blow - they  _ did  _ blow up Iwa-chan’s store just ‘cause they didn’t want him spilling to anyone about it. They want to capture and control, basically, and I’m pretty sure if they catch wind of you two - of any of us - you’ll be roped into it as well.”

“They can’t force us. Remember all the stuff from two years ago? They  _ can’t, _ ” Kageyama says. His eyes are wide now, none of the teasing left in them, and Hajime gets the annoying feeling he still only knows half of the story. 

Oikawa shrugs. “You’d be surprised. If it wasn’t for a flash bomb I found in the lab, I don’t think I’d have made it as far as Iwa-chan before they roped me back into it. I reckon you either play it totally dumb and still risk it - remember Iwa-chan’s store - or you vanish completely.”

“We have a nice setup here,” Hinata says, eyes flickering around the homely flat. “And a nice gig, too. People pay us.”

Hajime  _ knows  _ he’s not getting any of this, and he’s trying not to be irritated, he really is, but when the three others are acting like all the holes in his knowledge are things which are just  _ obvious,  _ it’s difficult. “What are you even talking about? Who pays you? What people? Why do you have to vanish? What the  _ fuck  _ is going on?”

Oikawa has the grace to look a little ashamed. “Sorry, Iwa-chan. Man, there’s a lot.”

“I have an idea,” Hinata interrupts, looking at Kageyama with something unreadable in his eyes, and a whole conversation passes in the split-second they fall silent. “Yeah. Iwaizumi-san, I need groceries, so  _ you  _ come with  _ me,  _ and Oikawa-san can stay with Tobio and sort all the big apocalypse-level shit out.”

“Shouyou-”

“And Tobio can fill me in on the details when we get back,” Hinata interrupts Kageyama. 

Oikawa looks at Hajime.  _ That okay?  _ He says with a raised eyebrow. 

Hajime nods minutely. He gets it. Divide and conquer, probably the only way that these two are going to ever get Oikawa and Hajime out of their flat. “Sounds okay to me, anyway.”

“Tobio, you can do the washing up,” is Hinata’s parting shot before he scampers off to find shoes. 

Hajime is the only one that hasn’t finished his meal, and as he begins to hurriedly scrape food into his mouth he becomes aware of a pair of eyes tracing their way around his frame, and a relentlessly bouncing leg brushing against his with every tap of a boot-heel against the floor. “Oikawa, calm down.”

“Sorry about all this, Iwa-chan.”

“Nothing to apologise for. Just help that kid with the washing up,” Hajime says, pretending he has no idea what Oikawa could possibly mean. 

He thinks Oikawa gets it. 

He hopes Oikawa gets it. 

Hinata trips out of the bedroom still with mismatched socks on and the shoes on the wrong feet, his hair a little flatter than before but still ridiculously messy. He slings a torn green bag over one shoulder. “Coming, Iwaizumi-san?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hajime calls, standing and depositing his plate by the sink. “I’ll leave you two to sort out the weird alien stuff.”

Hinata is already bouncing out the door. 

“I really am sorry,” is the last thing Hajime hears Oikawa say before he follows the little redhead out the door, closing it with his heel behind him and staggering to one side with a sudden gust of wind.

Hinata smiles a little wanly. “Oikawa-san really hates getting people into this. He mopes about it and sometimes he just rants about it over the waves and then Akaashi doesn’t speak to him for ages because usually he gives something really vital away.”

“But I thought Oikawa was working for those three until three weeks ago?” Hajime asks, following Hinata as he begins to bounce down the frail iron stairs two steps at a time. 

“He  _ was,”  _ Hinata concedes, “But he always kept one foot in our camp. And he always knew they were dodgy. Like.. Hatsu and Hikaru would have used the Erasion if they knew it existed, but Oikawa kept in contact. I suppose he must have got lonely - I would have, stuck in a lab with  _ those  _ three all day long. Man, can you even imagine?”

“Erasion? Our camp? How often does Oikawa ‘get people into this’?” Hajime crooks his fingers around the quotes. He  _ hates  _ feeling this out of his depth. 

Hinata looks apologetic. “Sorry. There’s this thing me and Tobio found a while back, something in a crash site I call the Erasion. It gets rid of short-term memories, as far as I can work out. Our camp… well, I guess there’s people like me and Tobio spread throughout the world, people like us that got involved accidentally with all the alien shit and couldn’t get out of it again. And… you know, aside from Tobio and - um, Tobio, you’re the first. The first one he’s got into all this, anyway, unless you manage to leave. But it’s hard to leave Oikawa-san, y’know… he’s really magnetic.”

Hajime shivers against the wind. (He heard the hesitation.  _ Aside from Tobio and - um, Tobio…) _ “Jesus. So it  _ is  _ like the X-Files.”

“Bokuto-san is a little less professional than the FBI, to be honest,” Hinata says cryptically. Hajime doesn’t bother questioning it this time - he assumes that if it’s important, he’ll learn about it at some time, but the overload of information is just hurting his head a little at this point. 

They walk in silence for a while. Hajime pats his car as they pass it, still neatly folded into the parking space, swiping off some brown ash with his thumb. The residue of the SuperStore from last night. 

“Supermarket’s down this way,” Hinata points, turning into the street and dancing around the puddles everywhere. “I don’t have that much money, to be honest, but if Tobio and Oikawa-san start planning the way they probably will, we’re gonna need a bit more than cereal bars.”

“Mm. I’m pretty sure I’m meant to be driving Oikawa to wherever he’s going, so I’m gonna need all my cash for gas,” Hajime says. He pats his jeans pocket, where his wallet bulges comfortingly, an anchor to a past life where things made sense. 

Hinata swings around a lamppost. (Jesus, this kid really  _ does  _ have an inexhaustible source of energy hidden somewhere.) “All our money goes on the flat and the radio connection. Oh, and the super-secret-money that keeps Hatsu and Hikaru away as much as possible.”

“How?” 

“Oh,” Hinata grins, “We just pay Bokuto to talk a lot about somewhere else instead. News always leaks out  _ somehow,  _ and if it doesn’t we leak it ourselves, and they keep well away from us.”

“Oikawa says we might draw them here,” Hajime tells him. Outside the supermarket he sees a man disembarking from a sleek red-and-black motorbike, and his fingers itch for that moment a few months ago, tearing down the country roads with Mattsun behind him screaming in his ear.

“Man, bikes are so cool,” Hinata says, following Hajime’s gaze. He very pointedly doesn’t reply to Hajime’s statement, and Hajime wonders if it’s just avoiding the truth until he can’t anymore. 

Hajime nods. “Can you drive one, huh?”

“No, but I wish I could,” Hinata whines. His eyes widen. “Can  _ you?”  _

“Yep.” Hajime smiles proudly and pats his wallet again, “Got a license here and everything.” 

“ _ Cool.”  _

***

As soon as the door closes, Kageyama stands and begins piling the dishes into the dishwasher, turning down the dial on the radio. Tooru side-eyes the FM display - it isn’t 121-129, so it’s not like Kageyama is turning down something just to hide it from Tooru. 

Man, the paranoia has got to him. 

Kageyama, to be fair, looks far better than he did the last time Tooru saw him. Better by a long shot. Last time, he’d been sallow and too thin and too angry. Bitter, caved in on himself, feeling betrayed by Hatsu and Hikaru and Tooru himself, and too protective of himself to listen to anything Tooru might have wanted to say to him. Sure, Tooru’s phoned him intermittently, and he’s heard about them on the 121-129, but it’s not the same as in real life. 

“I’ll dry,” he offers when Kageyama starts in on the washing that won’t fit in the machine. 

Kageyama nods. “Thanks,” he says quietly, handing Tooru a frayed pink hand-towel and turning to the sink.

_ Yeah, he looks better,  _ thinks Tooru. Kageyama, in a navy longsleeved top and those navy cargo pants covered in pockets, finally looks like he fits in the flat. God knows Hinata Shouyou has worked wonders on them all, even through the 121-129, and Kageyama Tobio most of all. 

“You’ve really fucked up this time, Oikawa-san,” Kageyama says as he hands Tooru a soapy plate. He says it as casually as someone would talk about the weather, but then, Kageyama’s always had a skewed perspective on these things. Ever since the Hinata Thing.

“Yeah. Yeah, I have,” Tooru agrees. 

Soap splashes on the floor. “Iwaizumi-san seems pretty competent, though. He’s not going to run off screaming. He’s not going to talk to Hatsu and Hikaru.”

Tooru hums. “Probably not.” He knows Iwaizumi won’t, and that’s the thing - while most of their conversations have just been lazy insults or panicked yelling or angry questions, Tooru recognises the same sort of curiosity and fierce protectiveness that they all seem to share to a degree after a while. 

Kageyama turns to lean against the cabinet, one eyebrow raised. “So what’s all this about? How come you suddenly ditch those two? Is this still about the Hanamaki thing, or something else? And how are you intending to pull this off without bringing us all down with you too?”

“I don’t  _ know,”  _ Tooru sighs, copying Kageyama’s pose, “I just… I couldn’t do the double act. And I really trusted Hatsu. And I found… there’s these maps, maps of some crazy shit, and I reckon I could find the crash site. I really could.”

“You say that every few years.”

“But there’s these things, leylines, and apparently where they converge it’s really… fuck, I don’t know, psychic or something. You two are better at this than I am.” Tooru rubs his eyes, feeling incredibly tired. “But spots like that are meant to be really good for things entering or leaving the atmosphere without being detected, and…”

“You think Miyu’s still alive.”

“I  _ know  _ Miyu’s still alive.”

Kageyama nods, not pressing the subject. Between Miyu and Hinata and the Hanamaki thing, both of them have untouchable subjects, and while they’re not as strictly taboo, they’re… not ideal conversation topics. “And what do you think about us? I mean… we have a good setup here. Relocating is a damned pain.”

“I know.” Tooru doesn’t want to force anyone out of their homes, and he really hates that him being here could mean Hinata and Kageyama uprooting their whole lives and possibly just vanishing for a while. “It depends. They blew up Iwa-chan’s store just for  _ maybe  _ knowing me… although I think that was just Takaki going overboard.”

Kageyama laughs dryly. “If we all make it out of this intact, I’ll… I’ll call up the 121-129 and arrange a massive party right here. This is stupid. We’re all probably going to die.”

“Yeah, but… Miyu. And…”  _ Hinata  _ goes unsaid, because Tooru knows as well as Kageyama does that they Don’t Mention The Hinata Thing unless Hinata mentions it himself, in which case it’s  _ fine.  _ The Hinata Thing is old news by now, anyway, but Kageyama still gets twitchy when anybody talks about car crashes and mutilated bodies on the news. (And Tooru will never forget that movie where the transformer slammed into the woman and Kageyama fell off the back of the couch and stormed off into the city to sulk.)

Apparently  this is as far as they take the discussion.

“Iwaizumi-san,” Kageyama says when the tea is brewing in two chipped mugs. 

“Iwaizumi,” Tooru echoes. He pours too much milk into his mug and not enough into Kageyama’s and spills half of it anyway on its journey from countertop to table. “What about him?”

“This is awful tea. Milk.  _ You  _ know,” Kageyama says. He raises one eyebrow at Tooru as he pours more milk in, and Tooru doesn’t know if it’s judgement for Iwaizumi or judgement for making some truly awful tea. 

He sits. “I kind of don’t, Tobio-chan, ‘cause I can’t  _ read  _ your  _ mind.  _ C’mon, just tell me. What awful things are you thinking about Iwaizumi?”

“I’m just thinking that he’s  _ fucked  _ if you don’t tell him things, Oikawa-san,” replies Kageyama evenly. He doesn’t even  _ look  _ at Tooru; he’s picked up a pencil and is flicking a ball of dust back and forth on the tabletop. 

“I’ve told him things. I resent that accusation, I resent it and all it stands for-”

“Tell him about Hanamaki and Miyu and your damn  _ escaped rabbits.  _ Or before you know it Hikaru’ll come up to him wheedling on and on and on, and he’ll have got your Iwaizumi just like he got your Han-”

“Shut up, Tobio-chan,” Tooru snaps. Kageyama’s eyes flicker to his, alarmed; Tooru rarely loses it anymore when they talk about any of that. 

“You can’t deny-”

“I didn’t  _ mean  _ to get him involved, okay, it was the first building I’d seen in seven miles and I was desperate, and fucking - Hatsu and Hikaru, they  _ changed  _ since we were last around. They got  _ worse.  _ I thought you guys were exaggerating, I really did, but Takaki pulled a gun and I freaked and ran and Iwaizumi was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Kageyama sighs and pushes his mug away from him. “Just tell him the full truth. You do  _ know  _ that’s why Shouyou asked him to come grocery shopping, right? He’s going to be bouncing around the pasta aisles and telling your Iwaizumi-san all about the crash.”

“I know,” Tooru says quietly. His head hurts. 

They sit in silence for a while, the silence that there used to be back those years ago when it was Tooru and Tobio and Hanamaki, spinning lies to Hatsu and Hikaru to keep Tooru away from the lab for a few extra weeks, the little blip on Tooru’s detector getting closer and closer, the silence of the three of them all trying to sleep in Hanamaki’s brown Mini Cooper, waking up at the crack of dawn to get more miles under their belt before it was all too late. Lazy, yet hurried. 

“I think we should all be careful, that’s all I’m saying,” Kageyama mutters, pushing his chair back and scooping up the mugs of tea, untouched. “Shove over. I’m going to wash these.”

“I’ll get in contact with Akaashi and get him to tell Bokuto, then,” Tooru says. He pauses. “If this is going to be a thing.”

At that moment he hears the rattling of the steps outside, and Hinata’s loud voice chirping happily. Something about either Kuroo or the 121-129, no doubt - Hinata will have taken the opportunity to  _ sell  _ the community to Iwaizumi, make it sound like a close-knit society spread across the globe, instead of a bunch of square pegs who have long stopped trying to fit into round holes and instead have hidden themselves into the dusty corners.

Tooru doesn’t  _ want  _ to tell Iwaizumi about Hanamaki, or about the real rabbits and Miyu, or about the dark days at the lab trying desperately to believe that Hatsu and Hikaru were good people, or about the Hinata Thing. 

He can leave Hinata to tell Iwaizumi about the Hinata Thing. 

And, truthfully, Tooru doesn’t know what to do. He knows he should want to get Iwaizumi back to his college and his normal life, and part of him does, but he also  _ really  _ doesn’t want to do this on his own. And Iwaizumi is comforting. Tooru doesn’t know when he last slept for as long and as deeply as he did last night, tucked into Iwaizumi on Kageyama and Hinata’s crappy old couch. 

Kageyama is right. 

He really has fucked up this time. 

As Hinata’s voice bounces closer, Tooru stands. “I’ll get the leylines map out. Maybe these two can help a little. Maybe.”

He’s rooting in his backpack when Kageyama comes up to him again. “Just remember… remember your limits, Oikawa-san. Remember what you can’t do.”

“Tobio-chan,” says Tooru, standing and spreading the old map over the table, the detector in his hand, just as Iwaizumi comes through the door, “There is  _ nothing  _ I wouldn’t do to get Miyu back.” 

Hinata kisses Kageyama on the cheek as he passes, dumping a bag of groceries by the table. 

“Nothing?”

Iwaizumi nods at Tooru in greeting, and Tooru feels something in his chest tighten. 

_ “Nothing.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really am sorry about all ^ ^ but its needed so there's not a fuckton of exposition later on. please keep reading i need the validation™ and all the comments pls thanks
> 
> also i am leaving this country for a while and updates may be slower cause imma soak up the sun
> 
> also i have purposefully been vague about which country our bros iwaoi are in because  
> 1\. i am british  
> 2\. iwaoi is japanese  
> 3\. all the alien things i have based this on are american  
> 4\. i enjoy being vague 
> 
> thanks for reading! and follow me on tumblr clearfullydearfully.tumblr.com for more gay nonsense


	3. leylines and other alarming occurences

“Iwa-chan, glad to see you back,” Oikawa says merrily, although something dances in his eyes that makes Hajime wary of just exactly  _ what  _ Kageyama and the other boy had been talking about while he’d been out. 

Hinata bounces over to the table, quick to dispel any awkwardness. “Whatcha got there, Oikawa-san?”

“The map I…  _ liberated  _ from the lab before I left,” Oikawa replies. He beckons Hajime over with a wave of his hand, still smiling, still too empty to be truly genuine. “Come on, Iwa-chan, let me show you this, and you might actually understand what’s happening here.”

“I don’t think I’ll  _ ever  _ understand what’s happening here,” Hajime sighs as he moves his way to Oikawa’s side. His conversation with Hinata, stilted and confused, has only made him more convinced that he’ll never ever understand what weird subculture he’s accidentally become submerged in. 

The page, a map of the world, spread across the kitchen table is covered in fold marks and creases, a tea stain covering one corner and blue lines criss-crossing it with no real pattern to it. It looks sort of like some maniac has taken a meter rule to it and a bright blue marker pen. Oikawa taps his long fingers across the two edges, keeping them smoothed out, the chewed ends of his nails making a  _ tap-tap-tap  _ sound against the harsh paper. At the centre all the  blue lines intercross and at this spot someone has drawn a neat red circle with a compass, beautifully smooth.

Hajime doesn’t have the first idea what it means. 

“See!” Oikawa chirps as though it all makes sense. “See!”

“I just see blue lines and a map of the world,” Hajime says bluntly, hands pushing over Oikawa’s and shoving them off the map and definitely not revelling in the contact.

“So do I,” admits Hinata. 

Kageyama doesn’t say anything, but he nods, looking inquisitively up at Oikawa for more explanation. They all are. 

“It’s  _ leylines, _ ” Oikawa says, like it should be obvious. “Leylines which mostly connect at one point  _ here-” _ he taps the map at the spot where all the blue lines converge - “And this could lead us directly to the crash site. And Miyu.”

Hajime rolls his eyes. “Two questions, Oikawa, and try to answer them honestly. What are leylines, what does this have to do with aliens - wait, no, three questions - and what does this have to do with your sister, if anything?”

“Leylines are lines where two objects of paranormal significance connect. The map was drawn out half a century ago by our predecessors in the lab, by this guy who signs himself  _ Little Giant.  _ He’s a legend, apparently, but nobody else in our group knows about him.” To prove his point, Oikawa holds his hands to Kageyama and Hinata - Kageyama looks blank and shakes his head. 

Hinata, however, is alight with excitement. “The Little Giant?” He breathes. “But… when I was a kid, back before the crash-” Kageyama and Oikawa both wince, and Hajime wonders what else they could possibly be hiding from him. “-Before the crash, I had this book series, kids books really, describing… all these things. The Greys. Atlantis and all that stuff, and they were all written by some guy calling himself the Little Giant.”

“So he worked for us,” Oikawa murmurs. 

“And he made this map, connecting… items of paranormal significance, right?” Hajime completes the story. 

Oikawa nods, smiling warmly at Hajime. “Yeah, like… here, here in the Himalayas, he circled the site with the most frequent sightings of Bigfoot, and connected it to this spot in Antarctica for some reason. I’m not sure… maybe some of the records of these cases have been removed, because  _ officially  _ our department still has no proof alien life exists…”

“That’s mostly our fault,” Kageyama points out. He looks at Hinata, who sits close to him with his hand around Kageyama’s wrist. “If it weren’t for us and the 121-129 and Kenma, who knows what you lot would have discovered.”

“Not my lot anymore,” says Oikawa. He looks proud. 

Hajime sighs and looks down at the map again. He knows that he’s not picking this all up and he likely never will unless Oikawa just tells him, but he’s managed to work out that Hinata was in some sort of crash, maybe, a few years ago. Something called the 121-129 keeps all these weird alien people in contact with one another. Somebody called Hanamaki was significant a while back, but something happened to him(?) and it really, really pisses Oikawa off. Somebody called Kuroo drives a motorbike and it annoys Hinata, who can’t drive a motorbike. And Kageyama used to travel with Oikawa - maybe. 

He’s going to wrangle the rest out of Oikawa if it kills him. 

“So  _ this  _ is the site where the Greys were first reported, I recognise that,” says Kageyama. He looks fascinated by the map. “Who updated it? Some of these lines are pretty recent.”

Oikawa looks sheepish. “I… uh, any spare chance I got, Tobio-chan! You know how it is, on the run from your former adoptive siblings, yadda yadda, so I hunted out a blue marker and added the rest of these lines. Y’know, sites I’ve been to, the Area 51 stuff that wasn’t around so much when this Little Giant guy was, stuff like that.”

“Nerd,” Hajime says. 

“You’re the nerd, Iwa-chan,” grins Oikawa, touching Hajime’s arm as he moves around the table to tap at a spot near the very centre of the map - a spot almost a thousand miles away, on the opposite side of the country.

He, Hajime, has a sinking feeling that Oikawa is about to announce that this is where they have to travel. This spot, where almost all of the blue lines hit through each other. 

“We have to travel to here,” Oikawa announces grandly. 

Hajime hits him. (Gently. It’s still a hit.) “No, we don’t.”

“But, Iwa-chan, this is where my sister probably is! If we find this site, we’ll have officially made contact with alien lifeforms! Don’t you want to find my sister?” Oikawa shoves out his bottom lip and widens his eyes, and Hajime is downright embarrassed to admit that - to an extent - he finds his will bending. 

But a _thousand miles?_ Hajime feels his wallet through his pocket; already it feels distressingly light. And he has a life waiting for him somewhere hours back on the road. “On whose gas money? On what grounds? What some random blue marker lines and a children’s book writer tell you?”

“ _ Trust me, _ Iwa-chan.” Oikawa’s eyes are wide and guileless. He lifts Hajime’s hand and places it on top of his own, right on the spot where the blue lines converge. “I know there’s something here - there has to be.”

“But the lines are drawn randomly between occurrences,” Kageyama says. He pulls his lip in between his teeth, chewing with well-disguised anxiety, “Look. If that line was drawn between Stonehenge and Egypt, instead of the Inca sites, then the spot where most of the lines meet would be…  _ here.”  _ His hand lands in the middle of the ocean, fingernail tapping slowly on the phantom spot. 

Hinata’s finger plants itself in the centre of Africa. “Tobio has a point… I mean, look! If the line you pointed out, Antarctica and Bigfoot, was moved to Bigfoot and the Grey, then the convergence would be here!”

Hajime tries very, very hard not to look at Oikawa’s face. He imagines crushing disappointment, sadness, tears, any number of melodramatic reactions. 

He doesn’t expect Oikawa to cackle into his ear with delighted laughter. “Ah, my little kouhai, you haven’t bested me yet! I noticed that too, about a fortnight ago, but then I realised… they all correlate. The Greys are drawn to points where animal abductions have been reported, see? They’re all linked. So the Aztecs and the Incas connect, and Egypt and the site of Atlantis connects, and then we all lead up to this spot.” Oikawa’s hand taps on the spot again, his other hand still resting on Hajime’s. He’s ridiculously warm, like some sort of space heater, leeching all the heat from Hajime and making it his own. 

Stupid Oikawa and his stupid journey. 

“So you’re going there, then,” Hinata breathes, awestruck. His head rests on Kageyama’s shoulder, but his eyes are wide and fixed at the signature on the bottom of the map -  _ Little Giant, 1956-19--- _

Hajime notices too. “There’s no date written on here. Does he still work with you lot?” 

“Uh…” Oikawa looks down, rubbing the back of his neck, “It’s sort of a thing. In the lab, I mean. Nobody that works there ever survives long, really. Life expectancy is even shorter than it is for the people that listen to the 121-129.”

“ _ Hardcore,”  _ Hinata whispers. He just sounds more impressed, which Hajime thinks is the wrong reaction. How did Oikawa cope, knowing that any moment his time could run out and he could become just another scribbled signature?  _ Oikawa Tooru, 1997-20---  _

He’d hate it.

“Not hardcore, Shouyou,” admonishes Kageyama. 

Oikawa has a strange look on his face. “No, chibi-chan, just sort of freaky. You guys are hardcore. Working at the lab is… it’s not anything like working with you guys. Us guys? People.”

The conversation dies as the group around the table drops into chairs - or rather, Hajime sits down, Hinata wriggles onto Kageyama’s lap, and Oikawa plants himself right on top of Hajime as casually as though Hajime were just another item of furniture. 

“You have such a bony ass, Jesus Christ,” Hajime grumbles. 

Hinata giggles into Kageyama’s shoulder. 

“Sorry, Iwa-chan,” says Oikawa, but he sounds delighted with himself instead.  _ Stupid Oikawa. Guy calls himself a professor? He’s a professional idiot.  _

Hajime gets the feeling none of them want to bring up the inevitable, but they can’t stay here for long. Red and Pinstripes and Suit - Hatsu and Hikaru and Takaki - will be following, surely, and from the sound of it, Hinata and Kageyama are well established in the weird-alien-subculture thing that this crowd have going for them. Surely,  _ surely,  _ those three will show up with their sharp lips and their pointed questions and their penchant for exploding houses. 

“Tea?” Hinata asks after a few minutes, shifting a little in Kageyama’s lap. “Tobio, go get the milk.”

“Lazy,” Kageyama grumbles, brushing his lips against Hinata’s as they both stand. 

“I want tea!” Oikawa shoves his hand in the air. “Iwa-chan? Tea? He totally wants tea, too, Tobio-chan. Four mugs!”

The room is dim - Hajime realises the curtains over the sink have been drawn since Hinata danced around to pop music making breakfast, and reaches over to twitch them apart and spill the early afternoon sunlight over the room. Kageyama grins. “Thanks, Iwaizumi-san.  _ Somebody  _ wanted to be ‘covert’ earlier and insisted we pull all the curtains.”

“And I told Tobio-chan that it was a stupid idea,” Oikawa says shamelessly. 

Hajime fights off a laugh. “Oikawa, you idiot.”

“Milk,” Hinata calls, dancing around Kageyama and completely ignoring the argument going on around him and instead opening the fridge with his toes. “Stop  _ arguing,  _ you two, and Iwaizumi-san, try not to encourage them. They actually seem to enjoy it, which is weird.”

“You’re weird, chibi-chan,” Oikawa says.

Hajime laughs into his shoulder. “Lame.” 

Kageyama pours the boiling water, Hinata drops in the teabags, and Oikawa snatches the jug of milk as soon as it’s set down on the table, pouring a tiny splash into his own mug and just the right amount into the mug he shoves toward Hajime. He must have remembered it from the awful gas station coffee Hajime made them both last night, which is surprisingly… caring of him? 

“Thanks,” he says, sipping. It’s the perfect tea. 

Hinata points Kageyama back into the seat and leaps back on top of him, nestling in and resting his head on Kageyama’s collar. He sighs contentedly. “Hey, this is nice, right? No car chases, no creepy aliens...”

“Touch wood,” Kageyama says, lifting Hinata’s hand by the wrist and brushing it against the table. “Can’t jinx it now, you can’t.”

Hinata giggles. “Fine, touch wood.”

The childish action brings a smile to Hajime’s face, which he struggles to hide behind Oikawa’s shoulder. He remembers running around as a kid, gap-toothed and grinning madly, chasing his friends around and yelling about jinxes and touching wood and avoiding  _ stepping on cracks, breaking mother’s backs.  _ He likes the soft touch. 

“Iwa-chan, you’re the only one who hasn’t touched the wood,” Oikawa says reprovingly. “Hurry up, or-”

And then

And then-

From the open window comes the  _ clank  _ of someone beginning to climb the rickety iron staircase. 

Hajime’s blood freezes in his veins.

Oikawa’s free hand grabs Hajime’s wrist. “You  _ didn’t touch wood,”  _ he says intensely, but Hajime can tell by the tight, tight grip that Oikawa is scared. Scared isn’t the right word - Oikawa feels like he felt when he burst into the gas station just last night, eyes wide, a rabbit caught in the oncoming headlights.

Hajime feels it too.

_ Hunted.  _

“It might not be them,” whispers Kageyama, but he whispers it. He doesn’t believe it. 

It might not be them. 

The steps bang against the wall with every step, and Hinata leaps up from Kageyama’s lap like he’s been stung, folding the map - wrongly, roughly - and shoving it into Oikawa’s backpack with a gracelessness that would make Hajime wince and unpack it… if the circumstances weren’t so suddenly urgent. The redhead kicks his bag towards Hajime. “There’s clothes and things in there, I think,” he hisses, “Take it. Go on. Oikawa, come  _ on!”  _

It’s the dropping of the honorific that gets Oikawa to jump up, leaving Hajime’s knee like a rocket’s been lighted on his feet. “They  _ found us,”  _ he hushes, a silent screech. “They found  _ me.”  _

Hajime stands, his brain kind of self-destructing a little bit, grabbing hold of Oikawa’s waist to steady himself as he kneels to pick up Hinata’s bag. He lifts Oikawa’s precious backpack, too - “here, put it on,  _ quick, quick!”  _ \- and sways on his feet, light-headed from the sudden rush of panic and adrenalin. 

“The roof, the roof, Shouyou, get the ladder up,” Kageyama scoots his boyfriend over and stops. “They’re just coming to the second floor. You have another minute, Oikawa, Iwaizumi - thank you for calling. It was good to see you again - Shouyou! Ladder! Quick!”

“ _ I’m doing it!”  _

“I’m sorry, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa says urgently. He grabs onto Hajime’s hand like a lifeline.

“Me too,” Hajime adds, although he doesn’t know quite what he’s apologising for. 

Kageyama looks at them oddly. “Don’t be. I’ll put a call in to the 121-129 and - get into our bedroom, go, Shouyou’s got a ladder up to the roof, fucking - fucking  _ hurry, they’re coming!”  _

Hajime moves faster than Oikawa, tugging the taller boy along with him, clipping his hip against the kitchen table as he barrels through the messy room and into the bedroom, which is still dark, the bed unmade, Hinata simply a silhouette as he pushes open a door in the ceiling. A folding ladder extends down to the carpeted floor.

“Get onto the roof,” Hinata urges, shoving Hajime in the small of his back. “Hurry, quick, Tobio can fend them off -  _ hurry up, fucking hell-”  _

Hajime trips onto the first few rungs, dropping Oikawa’s hand, going slower than he usually would because of the sheer fumbling panic that seems to have taken over his whole being. The steps are rickety, shaking under his hands, but Oikawa below him is going too fast for Hajime to slow down and take caution. 

“Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up,” Oikawa chants, and it spirals around Hajime’s head like a catchy song as he reaches the attic space and leans down to haul Oikawa the rest of the way. 

Hinata’s anxious face peers up at them in the gloom. “Good luck, Oikawa-san, Iwaizumi-san,” he whispers, “I hope you find your sister!” He reaches up and, on tip-toe, closes the attic door. 

Hajime and Oikawa are plunged into darkness. 

Hajime can hear Oikawa breathing far too fast and far too shallow. He knows he’s doing the same, but he can’t help it - he’s  _ terrified,  _ and he doesn’t fully know why - so both of them reach for the other’s hand at the same time. Hajime hears the clank of the iron rail against the wall, and he hears the three knocks ring through the apartment like a funeral bell. 

“There’s - should - a ladder, by the wall, a trapdoor,” Oikawa breathes into Hajime’s ear, pressed into his side like he can’t get any closer. “Can you get to it?” 

“I think so,” Hajime whispers back. He doesn't want to let go of Oikawa, who is warm and human and definitely not going to blow up anything, so he feels his way around the cobwebbed walls until he reaches a set of tough metal rungs. 

Oikawa clutches his hand. Even though his nails are short and bitten, the ragged edges are sharp, and they dig into Hajime’s skin hard enough to draw blood. (If Hajime could  _ see  _ anything in the darkness.)

From below, they hear Hinata chirp unnaturally loud: “Hatsu! Hikaru! And Takaki, too! Where’s Oikawa-san - isn’t he with you?!” It must be for the benefit of Hajime and Oikawa - Oikawa squeezes even harder at the names.

Hajime hears Kageyama’s voice, quieter, presumably telling Hinata to shut up and giving his own greeting.

“Have you found it?” Oikawa murmurs.

He nods, not daring to speak aloud. Hajime desperately wants to shift his weight or  _ something, _ but he's terrified that the floorboards will creak under his weight and give them away. What if the red woman with the sharp eyeliner and murderous red nails prises open the trapdoor and finds he and Oikawa cowering in the corner like scared refugees? No, it's vital that they reach the roof before the big man in the suit places another explosive next to the blameless kids they've stayed with - kids, after all, is exactly what they are. They need to be in Hajime’s car and away before the man with the pinstripes and the penetrative stare gives Kageyama a fishy grin and messes up their whole lives.

“You start climbing,” Oikawa barely even breathes the words. He mouths them into Hajime’s ear.

Hajime takes one step forward.

Something clinks against his foot. 

“ _ Iwa-chan!”  _ Oikawa hisses, sounding like a muted half-sob, as panicked as he was last night when he burst into the gas station.

Hajime bites his lip and tastes the hot copper before he takes another step. 

Below him, he hears Hinata’s piping voice - he must be squealing and squeaking and bouncing, radio on full blast, trying to drown out the sound of the two terrified runaways in the attic. 

Hajime puts his left foot on the first rung of the ladder, testing his weight against it. Who knows how long it’s been since it was last used? For a brief moment he imagines falling off and just going through the floor, landing on top of the pinstripes man, and his heart freezes in his chest. 

“It’s safe,” Oikawa murmurs.

Hajime nods.

And starts to climb. 

There are three rungs to step up before his head hits a wooden trapdoor, echoing with a dull  _ thunk  _ that makes them both freeze yet again. 

_ “Hah! Oikawa-san? Haven’t seen him in ages!”  _

They both breathe a sigh of relief - thank God for Hinata Shouyou and his excitable personality, otherwise the incredibly loud shrieking would definitely have alerted the three visitors already. Hajime lifts his left hand, his right still gripped tight to the topmost rung, Oikawa’s hand resting on the back of his leg, and feels around the edges of the trapdoor for some sort of latch or  _ something  _ to let them out. He finds it, finally, a little metallic lock that feels like it’ll pop open if he presses it. 

“Hinata,  _ please  _ make more noise,” Hajime half-prays to anyone that might be listening. His head pounds. His hands feel sweaty. 

He presses the latch. 

_ “Hah! No! Would you like some coffee?! Tea?!”  _ Hinata must be practically screaming, but Hajime can hear the thudding beat of the loud radio, so maybe it’s more natural down there than it sounds up here. 

A small sliver of sunlight slips through the room, illuminating Hajime’s face. 

“Push it open, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says as quietly as he possibly can. His hand holds tight to Hajime’s ankle just as it did to his wrist, and Hajime tries very hard not to think about  _ anything  _ as he props his fingers up and slowly, slowly,  _ slowly,  _ pushes the trapdoor up. 

More light streams in. 

Hajime never wants to be without it. 

Carefully as he can he places the trapdoor on the other side of the roof and climbs the last few rungs to shove his head into the wind. There’s no rain, as there had been when he’d gone shopping with Hinata, but the last few puddles remain in the tiles and Hajime’s mind flashes with the horrifying thought that he’ll slip, fall, and go crashing through roof and attic and right down to the three unwelcome visitors. 

“Iwa-chan!”

“Oh - shit, Oikawa-” Hajime leans down and heaves the taller boy up. (He’s still marvelling at how light he his, how skinny he must be below all the t-shirts and the plaid shirts.) “We did it!”

Oikawa grins happily, tears crinkling the corners of his eyes, cobwebs in his light hair and dirt over his cheeks. He grabs Hajime’s shoulders with rust-covered hands and giggles crazily. (Hajime knows he’s got to look the same.) “We didn’t get kidnapped and blown up!”

“We didn’t get kidnapped and blown up!”

Up here, the wind is strong enough to hide their normal speaking voices, but Hajime still doesn’t know how they’re going to get down without alerting Hatsu, Hikaru, and Takaki. The iron steps are far too noisy. 

“I think there’s a ladder down to the ground,” Oikawa says uncertainly, hand snaking down to hold Hajime’s. (Hajime doesn’t mind. At all. It helps him feel less like he’s just about to fall off the roof, buffeted by the wind.)

“Hm. Where?”

“Well  _ I  _ don’t know,” says Oikawa, a little irritability leaking into his voice - Hajime will blame the stress and the fear, otherwise he’d deck Oikawa over the back of the head. 

Hajime leans over the side and sees… 

Well, it’s not a  _ ladder,  _ per se, but it is a series of metal half-loops hammered hard into the wall, rusted by the constant exposure to the elements and looking incredibly insecure. He remembers that Hinata and Kageyama live on the seventh floor, and that the attic space is one more floor… that’s eight floors they might have to climb down, gripping onto thin metal hoops that really don’t look like they can hold the weight of a child, never mind two twenty year olds, no matter how light Oikawa may be. (Hajime knows that he isn’t. He weighed himself at the gym last week.) 

“Oikawa, I’m not climbing down that,” Hajime says as firmly as he can. 

Oikawa comes up behind him, wrapping an arm around his waist. “Is Iwa-chan afraid of heights?” Now the immediate danger is gone, a little teasing has returned to his voice. 

“Iwa-chan is afraid of falling to his horrible, bloody, squelchy death,” Hajime snaps. “It’s a human instinct to be -  _ wary  _ of heights.”

“So I’ll go first?”

We are  _ not  _ climbing down that,” Hajime doesn’t shriek. He definitely doesn’t. “Can’t we just… wait? They didn’t come inspect the back room back in the gas station and they’re probably not going to inspect the damn  _ roof  _ of the flat of some people you haven’t seen in a few years.”

“They blew up your gas station. And when they come back down, Hikaru will see your car, and he has a serious memory for cars. He’ll remember that guy that Takaki was meant to have killed and then they’ll burst back into the flat and up into the roof space, where they’ll see the trapdoor has dusty fingerprints on it, and they’ll come up onto the roof and push us off and we’ll  _ both  _ die bloody, squelchy deaths down there. They’ll take both of our bags and they’ll find the aliens and we’ll be too dead to complain.” Oikawa’s voice is measured and calm and his fingers only shake a little, but Hajime knows that he’s still freaked out. He feels a tiny bit ashamed. 

“Sorry.”

“Sorry.” 

“No, Oikawa, I-” Hajime stops himself. Oikawa is right - they don’t have much time before the three pursuers leave the flat and go out into the little alleyway, where they’ll surely recognise the red Ford Focus and make the easy connections. “I’ll go first.”

Oikawa shoves him aside, all but throwing himself off the side of the building, long fingers wrapping around the first rung with a fearlessness Hajime wishes he could copy. He smiles up at Hajime, hair whipping in the wind, lips shaking slightly. “Come on, Iwa-chan, this way you’ll land on something nice when you fall.”

“If,” Hajime says shakily. 

“If?” Oikawa begins to climb down. Hajime hears the clank of the rungs rattling in the concrete supports. 

_ “If  _ I fall, not when,” Hajime says, and swings one leg over the side of the roof. 

Immediately he feels the pull of gravity and the sharp knowledge in his mind that he is  _ eight floors above the ground.  _ He wonders dizzily how long it will take the city council to get the bloodstain off the cobbles, and then Oikawa is encouraging him from a few feet below - but quietly, as they pass the windows of the flat. Hatsu and Hikaru and Takaki might still hear them. 

Hajime puts his other foot on the rung below, bent double to still hold to the roof, wind stinging his eyes. “Oikawa!”

“One foot below the other, come on,” Oikawa encourages. His voice wobbles. “Come  _ on,  _ they’re going to find us and explode us like the gas station, come  _ on-”  _

He’s babbling again. Hajime takes two steps down. “Hurry down, then, Shittykawa,” he says, and he manages to keep his voice steady and low and definitely not tearful at all. 

Oikawa takes another three steps. 

Hajime takes two. 

“We’ve passed their window,” whispers Oikawa after another fifteen steps, and Hajime feels some of the anxiety around his chest loosen. 

It’s one hundred and six rungs after that until they reach the cobbled alleyway on the other side of the building. One hundred and six steps, Hajime running the count in his head like a war chant, Oikawa going considerably faster than he is. When he reaches the fifth rung from the end Oikawa holds out his arms - “Jump, Iwa-chan!” - and Hajime falls into them, shaking uncontrollably, rain (he calls it rain, it’s  _ rain,  _ it’s rain, dammit) staining his cheeks, hands scrabbling for a tight grip in the back of Oikawa’s awful t-shirt. 

Oikawa shivers. “You’re cold.”

“C-c-cold, yeah,” Hajime says, still clutching tight to Oikawa as the taller boy shuffles them both towards the end of the alley. It feels so good to be back on the ground. It feels so good for his shoes to be able to touch actual  _ ground,  _ actual puddles in his feet. “I’m never doing that again.”

Oikawa laughs. It sounds quite desperate. “Count me in that too, then.”

“Oikawa, that was fucking terrifying.”

“I know, Iwa-chan.”

_ “Terrifying.”  _

“Yeah, I know.”

The alley brings them out to the street that Hajime and Hinata had gone to get the food from just a few hours before. Hajime sees the space where the motorbike had been parked, the one Hinata had admired so feverently, and again he remembers his useless motorcycle license gathering dust in the bottom drawer of his bedside locker back in his dorm. “Hey, where did you park last night?”

“In the other alley,” Oikawa says, pulling Hajime quickly along the side of Hinata and Kageyama’s apartment building. “Hatsu and Hikaru will be parked here, they won’t have seen the car yet.”

Sure enough, just at the entrance to the alley are three black cars, identical in every way apart from the license plates, which differ each only by a number. Hajime looks around for the Ford Focus, sees it nowhere. “Where?”

“I moved the dumpster when I went out to get the food,” Oikawa points to the dumpster, which has shifted a little since last night. At Hajime’s doubtful expression, he grins. “It was empty. I’m not Superman, Iwa-chan, don’t worry. C’mon, help me shift it here, it took me fifteen minutes to do last time.”

Hajime heaves the left side. Oikawa pulls the right. They stagger with the still-empty dumpster to the centre of the alley and Hajime could collapse with joy when he sees his familiar little Ford. He got it from a scrapyard, the sort of dumping ground people drive their cars to and leave them with the keys still in the ignition. Hajime rescued it, gave it a wash, replaced a sticking valve in the gearbox, and resolved to keep driving it until it couldn’t be used anymore. 

“I’ve never been so happy to see my car,” he says aloud. 

Oikawa gives him a happy smile. “You drive.”

“I drive.” 

Oikawa tosses him the keys. Hajime snatches them out of the air and unlocks it with his thumb - the symbols are long worn off and the only way to tell them apart is by their place on the keyfob. “Get in, quick.”

“Bossy, Iwa-chan, I like it,” says Oikawa, but he bounces into the passenger seat and swings his bag from his shoulders, dropping it to his feet and beginning to fidget. “C’mon.”

“Coming - here, put that there,” Hajime says. He hands Oikawa the bag Hinata gave him just a few minutes ago, watches Oikawa drop it in with the other bag, and starts the car. The Ford rumbles to life with a satisfying hum, although the engine coughs when Hajime presses his foot to the accelerator and shifts easily into first to slide them out of the alley. 

Oikawa cheers so loudly Hajime thinks his eardrum might pop. 

But he can’t help to grin when they enter the slow stream of traffic coming into the centre of the city. “We got away, Iwa-chan!” Oikawa screeches, tugging at Hajime’s arm, an ecstatic grin on his face, “We did it! We should be spies, we’re so awesome, we’re - oh, wait, stop off at the next parking lot, I need to fix the radio, but - we did it!”

“The  _ radio?”  _ Hajime asks a little disbelievingly. Now that he’s in the car, an environment he understands, he relaxes completely. “What’s wrong with my radio?”  _ Traffic slows, traffic stops, slide out of gear, settle back in seat, foot off accelerator.  _

Oikawa grins, mischevious. “Nothing’s wrong with your radio. It just needs some updates, is all - hey, there, pull over there, that’s a parking space-”

“Keep your hair on,” grumbles Hajime.  _ Slip into gear, ninety-degree angle to turn in, first gear, cruise slowly… clutch in, loose on the accelerator, shift into reverse, out of gear, handbrake on, let the engine cool.  _

Oikawa smiles. “Let me out, then, Iwa-chan, we should be safe enough here. They’ll think we’ve gone on ahead, and I need the 121-129 before I explode.”

“What the hell  _ is  _ that?” 

“You’ll find out soon,” Oikawa says smugly. He opens his backpack and produces a long, slim wire with a little silver ball at the tip. It’s been bent and straightened many times, judging by the dents in the length, and before he leaps out of the car Oikawa boops Hajime on the tip of the nose with it, giggling. 

Hajime bats him away. (It’s not cute. It’s  _ not. _ ) “Shittykawa.”

“Oi!” 

Oikawa snakes up to the roof, one foot resting on his seat, his arms propping him up on the open door. Hajime tries very hard not to stare at the sliver of skin exposed underneath the t-shirt - Oikawa wears his jeans low on his hips, and Hajime can see his hipbone just above the belt loops. 

He swallows and looks away. 

Oikawa is unfairly attractive, okay, and it doesn’t mean Hajime is creepy at all. 

“Turn on the radio, please!” Oikawa calls. 

Hajime thumbs the radio and hops out of the car himself to get a look at what Oikawa is doing, turning up the volume to hear it outside the car. When he stands on his toes he sees Oikawa, face drawn in concentration, the tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth, wrapping the thin wire very carefully around Hajime’s already-installed radio aerial. It has a tiny plastic model of Nemo bopping around on the end, a gift of sorts from a jokey classmate that Hajime has never been bothered enough to take off. 

“ _... and now, the city council has just announced a pre scheduled demolition of the abandoned apartment block on the corner of St-Paul Street. Traffic warnings: none. Residents of the area should be wary for wreckage. The council would like to remind our listeners that this is an arranged demolition and there is no need for distress …” _

Oikawa’s fingers stop wrapping the wire. His eyes meet Hajime’s. “Wait.  _ Wait.  _ Fuck-”

_ “... and now, we bring you the latest hit to your charts, the rejuvenated classic by the Waterboys, The Whole of the Moon …”  _

Hajime’s heart, so recently returned to its rightful place, sinks to his shoes. “Oikawa. No. Don’t tell me, just don’t-”

Oikawa snaps the rest of the wire into place with shaking hands. “It is, Iwa-chan, it is, oh my God -  _ oh my God,  _ they’re in with the whole - everybody except us, everybody, they’re all in on it, I’ve killed them - I killed them, I - “

The explosion is far enough away that Hajime can stay on his feet. 

He doesn’t. 

He just sort of sits down on the hard tarmac. 

“ _ Tobio,”  _ chokes Oikawa from the other side of the car, and Hajime hears the ugly choke of the sort of tears that it’s impossible to hold back. “ _ Shouyou!”  _

This morning, a kid bouncing around in a binder and a smile - “ _ I’m eighteen, Iwaizumi-san, I’m not a child!” -  _ and sweet kisses against cheeks, the sort of love it was impossible not to be cheered by - this afternoon, a kid smiling adoringly at Oikawa when he thought Oikawa wasn’t looking - “ _ Oikawa-san, what are you doing?” -  _ and sweeping dark hair from his eyes. Letting them in at four in the morning. 

_ Fuck  _

Oikawa is completely silent. 

Hajime thinks his heart has stopped working. He distantly hopes that it has, just for a second. 

But

They

Oikawa

“Let’s go,” he says dully, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets and grabbing at a random scrap of paper just for something to hold. “Let’s go. They’ll find it.”

Hajime sits in the driver’s seat, hating himself, waiting for Oikawa to get into the passenger side before he can drive away. He plays with the paper he found in his pocket, folding the edges down, wondering why he doesn’t feel anything at all. The noise of the explosion still echoes faintly on the breeze. 

“What’s that,” Oikawa says. Tears drip from his chin and there’s a puddle on his knee. 

Hajime looks at the paper:  _ Hatsu and Hikaru, looking for Hanamaki Tooru ~~ xxx xxx xxx  _

“It’s nothing,” he says, and shoves it back in his pocket. (He remembers asking for a number just for something to say. He remembers the man in the pinstripe suit pulling the pad of notes over to him and scribbling down a number, and he remembers shoving the note in his pocket and then completely forgetting it. He remembers the gas station that doesn’t exist anymore, and he remembers two kids, and he thinks he might explode.)

The radio plays some sort of weird eighties song that reminds Hajime of last night at the gas station. 

“Oh,” Oikawa says, emotionless. “Oh, yeah.”

He reaches out and slowly, methodically, types in :  _ 121-129.  _

Immediately, a bright, crowing voice fills the car. Hajime hates how happy it is - two boys are  _ dead  _ now - 

“...  _ and more news on the Professor front, for all you guys that were wondering… apparently he’s hitched up with some guy, wheew, hope it doesn't work out like the last time did... no offence meant, Prof! Please don't kill me … and we have Second Giant and King here via phone call to tell us more of the news …”  _

Hajime is just ready to cry, now, easing his way into the traffic, when Oikawa screams and punches the ceiling in delight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> um  
> sorry  
> rlly i am   
> also there's something wrong with ao3 listings and i dont think its showing my fic in the recently updated?? so if yall could tell me if its there or if this is just a problem with my shitty laptop that would be great  
> if it helps, theres a reason theres no archive warnings apply  
> thanks for reading and pls review for motivation thanksssss xxxxxx


	4. the 121-129

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so theres a dream and its super fuckin trippy and theres body horror and weird gore??? but its not *super* relevant to the plot (i'll summarize it in the end notes for ppl that want to skip it) so it's from the second "***" to the very end of the chapter
> 
> thanks if you're still reading this fic (also if you could recc it to people that would be gr8 i am thirsty for them views) 
> 
> Enjoyy!!

Hajime remembers back when he was very, very young, running around his garden chasing bubbles that his mother blew. She stood on the veranda, raised a few feet above the ground, and waved the stick in the air - Hajime and three of his cousins ran around shrieking whenever the cold bubbles floated downwards and popped on their faces, sending cool water all over their cheeks.

It was summer, a few steaks sizzling on the outdoor grill, cans of juice sitting abandoned on the wall as they chased around the floating soap bubbles. 

He remembers one particular bubble. 

His eldest cousin, half a year older than him, had taught him a trick: if Hajime shoved his hand in the blue water barrel around the back of the house, wetting his arm up to the elbow, the bubbles would land in his cupped palms and stay there until he squashed them out of existence. 

He had chirped for his mother to look and she stood, laughing, bubbles still streaming from the stick held in her hands. Bubbles covered his arms and his cheeks. He was soaked from head to foot, practically jumping into the water barrel to catch more bubbles on his skin. 

She blew a big one, just for him. 

But the water had dried on his skin in the baking heat of the summer, and the bubble landed on the tips of his fingers, and the feeling of his stomach dropping out from the shock of the pop had made Hajime sit down in the grass, just where he was, shove his damp fingers into his mouth, and wail and cry until there were no more tears left in him. 

His eldest cousin had laughed. He was just old enough to understand that being kicked down upon worked both ways, and soon all three of Hajime’s cousins were in tears with helpless laughter. 

The confusion - Hajime was  _ very  _ young - as to why the three of them found something so distressing so  _ funny…  _ the emotions that they should have had turned on their heads… it was so astonishing to Hajime that he stopped crying and just  _ stared.  _

***

Hajime just  _ stares.  _

They come to a red light. 

Hajime stares at Oikawa, tears tickling the backs of his eyes, his hands slippery on the steering wheel. Oikawa’s got tear tracks on his cheeks, a little droplet on the point of his chin, and he’s still covered in cobwebs, and he’s smiling like he’s just inherited a massive fortune, a mansion in the countryside, and a very cute dog. “Oikawa, what the fuck?”

Oikawa isn’t listening. He whacks Hajime’s shoulder and makes a shushing motion, his eyes bright and fixated on the little radio display still telling them that they’re listening to 121-129. 

Hajime remembers a long wire on his aerial. 

And Hinata talking about the 121-129.

What the  _ fuck?  _

The cheery voice on the radio just keeps talking, babbling on like he has far too many words to say in far too little a space of time. Hajime looks again at the display, at the numbers, and wonders if this radio station is really  _ all  _ that the other three have been referring to with darkened looks and significant glances.

_ “Second Giant and King here, speaking via phone, and Prof, I hope you’re listening! Heya, King, Second Giant, haven’t heard you two on the waves in a while. How’s it spittin’?”  _

_ “Pretty freaky, Hoot,”  _ says a voice, crackling and messed up with the phone static but still recognisable. 

The light turns green. 

Hajime’s mouth drops open, staring at the radio, and he doesn’t move forward. He  _ can’t.  _

“Oikawa, that’s Hinata,” he whispers to a background orchestration of frustrated drivers honking their horns at him. Oikawa hits his knee - “Iwa-chan, drive!” - and Hajime starts inching forward again, but he thinks his heart has stopped beating, because that’s Hinata’s voice on this new radio station. 

_ “Freaky? Man, tell me ‘bout it, when you got the Professor and a new guy ‘round. King, how’s it hangin’? You tell us anything we don’t know?”  _ The voice on the radio is male, and  has very clearly put on an accent, loud and drawling and confident, the sort of voice that smiles for itself. Friendly. Welcoming. Part of it must be to disguise himself from listeners - these people seem pretty big on privacy - but Hajime can see the grin on his face from wherever he is. 

_ “It’s not great, to be honest. We’re calling to update and also to get the Professor aware of our location-” _

_ “We don’t have a car and we’re sitting in a leaky - um, sitting, and it’s raining!”  _ Hinata squeaks yet again, interrupting Kageyama’s familiar voice, that level tone trying as hard as he can not to be as energetic as his boyfriend. 

Kageyama and Hinata are not-blown-up, they are very alive and well, and their first thought is to call in to a radio station. Admittedly a radio station that seems to have a lot of weight in this world, but still… doesn’t Oikawa have a phone? Don’t they have his number? Why does some guy on the radio called  _ Hoot,  _ of all things, seem to know about Hajime being with Oikawa - Oikawa, presumably, being the  _ Professor -  _ when Hajime himself doesn’t know anything about it?

_ “Prof, you listenin’? Giant and King want you there as soon as possible, pronto, urgently, and I’ll keep the world updated. Hey hey hey, King, so what’s happened? Why the urgency?” _

“Possible, pronto, urgently…” Oikawa murmurs beside Hajime, head suddenly bowed. “Well, Iwa-chan?  _ Drive.  _ I’ll tell you where to go. Possible… pronto… urgently…” 

Hajime eases them into the lane leading to the city centre, figuring that if they’re going to pick up Hinata and Kageyama - who are alive, thank God - then they shouldn’t move too far from the apartment building. He wonders if the three black cars, Hatsu, Hikaru, and Takaki, are following his Ford. He wonders if the big man will pull out a gun and finish what he started with Hajime’s gas station. 

“Possible, pronto, urgently… slow down, Iwa-chan, you look like you have really bad road rage…” 

_ “It’s Lipstick and Redeye and James,”  _ says Hinata from the radio.  _ “Tell ‘em, K - King.”  _

_ “The Prof officially broke it from the Three Musketeers,”  _ Kageyama says, and there’s a scuffle from the car’s end of the line as the wind buffets Hajime’s radio aerial and the thin wire wrapped around it. When it next picks up, Kageyama is in mid-rant - “ _... and the Professor showed up with a new guy, fuck it, we’re gonna call him Beginning, ‘cause he’s begun something weird, and me and Giant were sleeping! Sleeping! We don’t do that often!”  _

_ “Heyheyheyyyyy,”  _ drawls the Hoot guy suggestively.

Hajime glares at the radio. “I wasn’t that much of a bother to him.”

“Nah, he just really hates it when I show up in the middle of the night,” Oikawa says dismissively. “Hah! I figured it out! Okay, head down that street, turn left, and wait at the bus stop until half two. That's just ten minutes, so we'll be fine. They’ll have showed up by then.”

“Figured what out?” Hajime asks, but he does as Oikawa says. His fingers still tremble with fear left over from the blow. Residual anxiety. 

Oikawa taps his shoulder when the car slows at the bus stop. “I figured out the code, dummy. Akaashi always writes the codes, and each of us has a different solver, but I left mine under my mattress. I was going by memory. So it took me way longer than it usually does.” 

“But  _ what  _ code?” Hajime asks impatiently. Neither of them are listening to the radio any longer, which has started playing a song Hoot calls  _ “The greatest track of 1989”  _ and which turns out to be Taylor Swift, so he unbuckles his belt and turns to face Oikawa, watching the rain drip down the car window behind the other boy’s head. 

“It’s actually kinda cool,” Oikawa says. He reaches down and pulls out an open pack of cigarettes from the side pocket of his backpack, a packet that Hajime recognises from the gas station. He pulls a lighter from the pocket of his jeans, lights the cigarette, and exhales peacefully. 

Hajime coughs. “What. Is. Cool.” 

Oikawa giggles, rolling down the window and shoving his hand outside to get the smoke away. “Bo- hah,  _ Hoot,  _ does the talking, but before those two called in, they texted. Probably on chibi-chan’s phone. Aka- uh, man, I don’t know if I can - well, the other guy that works with Hoot, he gets the text that says something like ‘Hi, me and Tobio-chan are going to be at this address at this time, please get the message to Oikawa-san.’ Or something like that. Get it so far?”

“The radio didn’t say an address or a code or anything, though,” Hajime interjects, because although Oikawa had been murmuring those three words, there’s no way he could have got a time and a place from just  _ possible, pronto, urgently.  _

Oikawa huffs a massive breath of nicotine smoke. “Yeah. That was only the time to meet. Two p-words followed by any other word means two and a half, so the time is half two. There were other words dropped through that gave the address and the specific place - Akaashi is a genius. Hey, maybe you'll meet him sometime, you'd probably like him, and he writes all the prompts for Hoot. Well, most of them. Hoot drops in his own now and then, but he leaves it to Akaashi more often than not.” 

“Pff-” Hajime flips the switch on the air vents, trying to get the smoke away from his face. “Why couldn't he just  _ say?”  _

The clock on the dashboard reads 2:31. Oikawa smiles, eyes dark and intense.

_ “Paranoia is in bloom…”  _

It takes Hajime a couple of seconds to work out that the words are coming from the radio and not from Oikawa’s parted lips, from which the cigarette dangles loosely as he fiddles with the air conditioning.  _ “And this is Muse with the epic hit… fuck, what do you call the song… ah, who gives a fuck, it's awesome! Yeah!”  _

Oikawa shifts up in his seat. “Hey, is that them?”

“I can't tell,” Hajime says, squinting through the rain - spattered windscreen. He thinks he sees a small orange blob dotting around, and it  _ is  _ the apparent meeting time, but he can't shake the feeling that the escape from Hatsu and Hikaru was just far too easy. Maybe it's because of the dark way the other three say their names, as though they're something more than human, but Hajime gets a creepy feeling on the back of his neck every time he thinks of them. 

“It’s them!”

Oikawa leans over Hajime, his hair tickling Hajime’s jaw, and punches the horn three times, hard.

Hajime may or may not short - circuit a little because  _ wow,  _ Oikawa is in his lap, and  _ wow  _ is he shallower than he thought he was - 

_ ”You're a fucking idiot!”  _

His heart leaps in shock when the back door open and Kageyama throws himself in, covered in rain, his hair grey with dust, blood on his left cheek. Hinata comes falling in on top of him with a gasp as Kageyama’s knee hits his chest, coughing. There’s a speckle of blood on the corner of his lip, but before Hajime can fully process it -  _ oh god, they're hurt, oh god -  _ Before he can even think it, Kageyama grabs his shoulder across the glove box. “D-drive and keep driving ‘till you're out of t-the city, and Oikawa, get back here and h-help me with Shouyou, he's hurt-”

Hajime drives.

He's always done what he was told.

Oikawa throws the cigarette out the window as Hajime pulls away from the bus stop, lifting himself from Hajime, his cheek brushing against Hajime’s as he practically throws himself into the back seat. His face is transformed with panic, but Hajime has shut down, back into driving mode. Nothing matters but  _ first gear, apply brakes at red light, check mirror, accelerate, use the blinkers, mirror, windscreen wipe…  _

“You were on the fucking 121 just a second ago and you sounded fine!” Oikawa half-yells, half-questions Kageyama. Hajime flicks his eyes to the mirror to see Oikawa pressing his hands to Hinata’s pallid cheeks, his own gaze directed straight at the shaking Kageyama.

“We didn't l-lose them,” Kageyama says. Now that he's in the car he seems to have calmed down a little, no longer a loose cannon, just an anxious teenager with a tremble to his lip.

“What do you mean? They following us?” Hajime asks, keeping one eye permanently on the mirror to check for long black cars in his peripheral vision.

“I d-don’t know, but we were coming here and I looked around and Hikaru threw one of those fucking d-dart things he has, and it was aimed at me but Shouyou-”

“ _ Fuck,”  _ Oikawa curses. “Did you see the colour on the flights?”

Hajime wants desperately to be able to help. Hinata doesn't look fully conscious, a sheen of sweat on his forehead and his eyes half - lidded, and Hajime feels beyond useless just driving as though there's nothing wrong.  _ Check mirrors, nobody coming, switch lanes… is that a black car? No, it's just a black Peugeot, nothing to worry about…  _

“F - flights?”

Oikawa pulls up Hinata's t-shirt, his hands vanishing from Hajime’s sight in the mirror. “Tip of the dart. The winged bits, were they green or red or white or black? Iwa-chan, can you go any faster?”

“I'm trying,” Hajime says through gritted teeth. A fresh wave of panic washes through him as he sees, unmistakably, a long black car pulling out of the side lane and sliding in three cars behind the Ford, followed by a second, identical car. There are no model markings on it, the windows blacked out, and Hajime just  _ knows  _ that it’s those three. Two. Three. His hands slip off the gearstick, palms sticky with sweat. Should he mention it? He should, he should warn them, but Oikawa is barely holding it together and Kageyama looks five seconds from a flat-out panic attack in the back seat. 

He avoids thinking about Hinata’s situation. 

“W-winged bits… um…” Kageyama fights to keep his breathing under control, and gasps when Hajime flings the car down a narrower side street accessible only through a break in the traffic. He sees one of the black cars make it through, the other one stopped by a freight truck, and swears. 

Oikawa curses again. “Winged bits! Winged bits - black is deadly, white is incredibly painful, red is going to knock you out, green is going to infect. What was it?”

“G-green!” Kageyama spits out, tangling his hand in Hinata’s hair. “Hikaru threw a r-red one, but I ducked, and that’s when Shouyou lost his phone ‘cause he t-threw me backwards and Hikaru threw the g-green one…”

“Green, okay, we can work with green, green is fine, green is fine, so long as we get him to the doctor, Hanamaki once got hit with a green- Iwa-chan, can you try and stop throwing him so much-”

“I can’t, or they’ll catch up,” Hajime says tightly. His shirt sticks to his back. His eyes are damp with moisture - he can’t afford to close them, just in case he misses something - 

“They’re following us?” Oikawa hisses. 

Kageyama whimpers. Another glance in the mirror tells Hajime that Kageyama is about a millisecond from a breakdown, but he can’t do anything about it. 

“They’re following us.”

“ _ Fuck.  _ Does anyone have a phone?”

Hajime shakes his head, Kageyama just shakes, Oikawa swears some more and Hinata lets out a small, piteous whimper. He coughs, and more flecks of red appear on his chapped lips, and Oikawa hisses, Hajime apologising desperately as he turns the car into another side street with far too sharp a jerk of the steering wheel. 

And then Hajime remembers - “Hinata gave me his backpack! Oikawa, fuck, it’s in the front - in the footwell, get it, oh  _ shit,”  _ his speech dissolves into mumbled swears when Hikaru, the guy with the floppy hair and the red eyes, sticks his head out of the top of the first black car. As Oikawa dives into the front, his body too tall and gangly to properly do  _ anything  _ in Hajime’s tiny Ford, Hajime sees Hikaru begin to laugh, his mouth wide and wet with saliva. 

It looks like something out of a horror movie. 

“This fucking car wasn’t build for rallies,” Hajime snarls, and drives headlong into the traffic speeding perpendicular to the street he’s coming out of. 

“ _ Iwaizumi!”  _ Kageyama screeches. 

Oikawa is flung backwards with the sudden acceleration, swearing loudly, but Hajime isn’t responding. He’s fucking terrified. 

He remembers learning how to drive his cousin’s motorcycle, when they were both a lot older and neither of them liked to chase bubbles around the front yard anymore. His cousin, pulling his helmet off his messy black hair, had shoved the helmet onto his head, showed him how to do the straps on the buckles, which gloves to wear that would absorb the sweat but wouldn’t slip around or be too bulky.  _ “Most important, Hajime,”  _ he’d said, fixing Hajime with a serious stare so contradictory to his usual attitude,  _ “Most important of all is that you don’t treat a bike like a car. Never treat a bike like a car. A bike can do things a car can’t, and a car can do things a bike can’t, but if you mix one with the other, you’ll crash. It’s dangerous, and your mother will kill me if you get yourself killed ‘cause you thought you could slide your shitty Ford through the traffic. Got it? _ ” 

Hajime had nodded. He had got it.

“Iwaizumi!” Kageyama yells again.

Hajime knows he could make it into the fast lane on his bike. There’s a truck driving a little slower than everything else, and ahead of it is a quickly-accelerating silver Toyota, sleek and low to the ground. The gap the Toyota creates is getting big enough for the Ford, if Hajime slips it around to immediately enter the stream of traffic, but there’s no way a long car will be able to fit in. 

“Oikawa, hold on,” Hajime advises. The black car overtakes a dented green pickup, and now there’s just one car and a pedestrian crossing separating Hajime from Hatsu and Hikaru and Takaki. 

“What are you going to do?  _ Fucking hell-” _

Hajime presses all his weight on the accelerator and pulls on the wheel as though he’s pulling on his bike, remembering his cousin’s laugh, the way he used to say  _ “You’re far too clunky, Hajime, c’mon!”  _ And tease Hajime until they were racing along the deserted roads. 

The Ford skids across the almost-empty slow lane. Hajime feels the rubber burning off the back wheels, and hears the cars in the slow lane blasting their horns angrily at the drunk pack of teens in the wrecked old Focus. The Toyota and the truck have sped forwards by now, a hundred feet ahead, so Hajime switches into sixth - up down up quick quick quick foot on the clutch come on now - and leaps forward. 

He hears something complain in the engine. 

He hears Kageyama breathing far too fast, Oikawa with his head in the footwell and one hand clutching Hajime’s knee so tight Hajime can’t feel his lower leg. 

The truck honks at him too, but Hajime can’t bring himself to care. He practically flings the Ford through the gap, yanking on the steering wheel and skidding the car sideways into the gap. The Toyota speeds further forward. The truck brakes.

“Iwaizumi-san,” Kageyama breathes. He's hugging Hinata gently, close, a thumb sweeping over his boyfriend's bloodied lips, his face almost as pale as Hinata’s. “Iwaizumi-san, please never do that again. Ever.” 

Hajime relaxes. Sets the cruise control on. His heart is hammering in his chest like it’s about to burst out, but a quick glance in the mirror tells him none of the black cars were able to follow. “Sorry.”

Oikawa emerges, hair tousled, holding a second phone in his hand. A flip phone, the sort that Hajime might have owned ten years ago, with a little model of an alien head dangling from the keychain. “I second that, fucking hell, Iwa-chan. Never ever ever ever do anything like that again, I think I left my brain behind somewhere back there.”

“But we  _ are  _ heading right out of the city,” Hajime points out. He risks a swivel in his seat. “How’s Hinata?”

“Mm… Tobio?” Hinata himself murmurs. There’s a greenish tinge to his cheeks that Kageyama tries to brush away with a soft touch of his palm, a whispered  _ “I’m here, Shouyou,”  _ that makes Hajime feel like he’s eavesdropping.

“He’s going to be okay, I think, so long as we get him to the doctor quick,” Kageyama says to the whole car. 

Oikawa rights himself in the passenger seat, keying a number into the phone. “Iwa-chan, turn on the radio, can you? I’m just going to get - uh, I guess. Get him. It. Them. Reckon we can send for the ambulance?”

“Isn’t it a little dangerous to take him to a hospital? I mean, you said your department was governmental…” Hajime raises one eyebrow doubtfully at Oikawa’s seemingly blase attitude to Hinata’s wellbeing, especially after they just got out of… well, basically a car chase, if he’s being totally honest. 

Snorting in (slightly hysterical) laughter, Oikawa shakes his head. “They aren’t a normal medical service. Hey, radio, quick-quick, while I text Akaashi…” 

“Oh, yeah.” Hajime reaches out and hits the button for the radio, waiting for the disguised drawl of the host and the hidden code writer to wash over them. 

_ “... and no feedback from Giant, King,  _ **_or_ ** _ the Prof yet. I gotta say, guys, I’m getting kinda worried…”  _ the voice genuinely does sound anxious, and Hajime wonders how close this whole community is. Hinata and Kageyama are obviously dating, yes, but do they all know each other? Has the host, this Hoot guy, ever met Oikawa? Ever laughed with Hinata? And what about the others that have been hinted at?  _ “... hold on! A call! It’s Giant’s second phone, the old one, woah… Giant?”  _

“Heya, Hoot,” Oikawa says, affecting a stupid British accent, speaking slightly louder than normal. A millisecond later his words come from the radio.

Hajime wipes rain from the windscreen. 

_ “Prof! Prof! Oh, thank God, man, fill me in. Loyal listeners of the 121-129 have been messagin’ like mad to find out what’s the deal with you three… four? You pickin’ up another roadrunner? What’s happening there?”  _

An interesting thing Hajime has noticed - when Hoot gets energised, his faux accent drops, replaced with a light, neutral sort of tone. He could come from anywhere, really. 

“Well, I broke it from Lipstick and Redeye,” Oikawa replies, his own voice slipping into the strange, almost slang that everyone seems to use when they call in to the radio. Hajime keeps one eye on the disheveled boy beside him, one eye on the road, full of curiosity. “I broke it, and I got a new guy, and Redeye got up Giant. King and Giant broke it from the flat, so they’re not reachable there anymore, if anyone needs them.” 

_ “What the fuck? How’s Giant? Who’s this guy? Prof, spill it from the start, don’t leave anythin’ out if it’s important, man, this is some serious shit.”  _

Hajime turns up the volume.

Oikawa takes a deep breath. “Man, you know I gotta leave out some shit, but… fuck it. I broke it, but those three came after me, and I ran into this guy… uh, call him Shorty-”

“Fuck you!” Hajime interjects, slapping Oikawa’s shoulder.

_ “Heya, Shorty,”  _ says Hoot from the radio. 

“Nope. Call me Ford if you’re gonna call me some freaky nickname, man, at least my car loves me.” Hajime means it as a joke, more preoccupied with checking up on Hinata in the mirror, watching Kageyama slowly recover from the verge of his panic. 

_ “Ford, huh, hey. Welcome to the shitshow, yeah! Prof! Keep going.” _

Oikawa laughs. (His voice is still shaky, Hajime notices, and wishes he didn’t.) “Okay, met Ford, decided to crash with Giant and King, and the other three caught up to us. We split, Ford and me, and then we heard an explosion, and those two came on with you. Redeye got up Giant, though, so we need the Doc, so that’s why I’m calling in.” 

_ “Fucking hell, man,”  _ whistles Hoot.  _ “I’ll get my number one most amazing love in the world - ow! Motherfucking - he threw a stapler at me - I’ll get him to text. You okay?” _

“Headed down,” Oikawa says cryptically, and hangs up. 

Hajime looks across at him. Oikawa stares ahead, the phone still held loosely to his ear, his eyes fixed on nothing in the middle distance. His left hand is clenched in the loose fabric at the hem of his shirt, tense and quiet, and Hajime wonders what he’s thinking of. “Hey. Shittykawa. You okay?” 

“Huh?” Oikawa turns, eyes widened, lips parted. (Hajime doesn’t look at them. He doesn’t.) “Oh - yeah, I guess, I… just tired. Shouyou won’t be critical, but we need to get him to the doctor as soon as we can or he’ll just stay like this. Tired, Iwa-chan, that’s all.”

Hajime snorts skeptically, but doesn’t push. “Just tell me where to drive and you can crash there. Or sleep now, c’mon, Hinata will be fine. I’ll wake you up if something comes on the radio.”

Oikawa smiles gratefully, letting the phone slip out of his hand and releasing his tight grip on his shirt. “Keep an eye on those two, Iwa-chan.”

“I will, just go to  _ sleep, _ ” Hajime says. 

Oikawa grabs his hand, resting on the gearstick. “Thanks.”

Hajime doesn’t move the hand, and he thanks his lucky stars Oikawa falls asleep before he notices the blush creeping around the back of Hajime’s neck and across his cheeks. 

***

Tooru rarely dreams. Usually when he sleeps, it’s because his body has just shut down from complete exhaustion, and he’s too tired to do anything but enter deep sleep for a day or so. Real life is fucked up enough that he doesn’t think he’s missing out on much, anyway.

But when he’s running away from Hatsu and Hikaru, he sleeps far more than he usually does. (He’s only done it once before, but he remembers Hanamaki telling him to  _ “Sleep, for God’s sake,”  _ as though it was normal to do it at least once a day. And now it’s Iwaizumi.  _ “Just go to  _ **_sleep.”_ ** _ )  _

And now that he sleeps, he dreams he’s back in the lab. 

“Tooru,” Hatsu says opposite him, a red pencil in her hands. She must have used it to poke him awake. “Tooru, we’re heading out. Do you want anything?”

In the lab, his head always feels full of fluff, unable to work properly. He just shakes his head, watches Hikaru across the room laugh at something Hatsu must have done. “You sure? You  _ sure?”  _

“I don’t want anything,” Tooru mumbles. He watches Hatsu and Hikaru leave, patting Takaki on the shoulder from where he sits by the door. Tooru can’t remember what he was doing, but he thinks it was important. 

That happens a lot.

He looks down at what he was working on, a sheet of paper with three words written on it.  _ Little Giant. Hanamaki.  _ As he stares, his hands - weird, they’re covered in blood, as though he’s bitten through his nail too deep again - pick up the pen and write  _ Iwaizumi Hajime  _ in a shaky, almost unreadable scrawl. 

“Oikawa-san?” Calls a piteous voice from behind him. “Oikawa-san, why did you do it?”

He whips around, staring at the back wall of the laboratory, where they usually keep the flasks and bottles and sample jars they collect when they roll out the black cars to go intimidate a member of the 121-129 and obtain (steal) their collection. Instead of the massive collection the three of them have made, there lies Hinata as he was when Tooru first saw him, a tiny body half-crushed under the massive weight of a chunk of metal. 

“Oikawa-san?”

“Shouyou?” Tooru says, the fluff vanishing from his mind, and he suddenly remembers a whole year of things that he’d forgotten. Hanamaki suddenly makes sense on his page. “Shouyou, what are you  _ doing? _ ”

Hinata lifts his hand feebly, sweeping at the torn girder trapping him to the ground -  _ He was so small, and Tooru hadn’t been able to believe that the voice they’d followed half across the country was drawn down to such a small figure lying on the ground, crumpled like a used napkin, utterly broken - _ his fingertips are red, and when they brush the metal, three long streaks are left behind. “Kageyama isn’t here. Kageyama isn’t here. Where did you send him, Oikawa-san? Why did he go?”

“ _ Shouyou,”  _ Tooru chokes. He wants to move, run like he did on that night, but he seems stuck to his lab chair. “I didn’t send him anywhere, I - he’s coming, he’s coming-” 

He thinks he remembers something about a car coming soon, about Kageyama and Hanamaki tumbling out and running towards them, but he sees nothing. Hinata stares at him. Stares at him. There’s a cut on his cheek, long and narrow and deep, dripping off his jawline. “Oikawa-san, I didn’t know, but I know now. You gave him the wrong number.”

_ “No!”  _

“You gave him the wrong number and Makki died. Tobio came to find us. We never knew what happened. But I  _ know.”  _

“You’re wrong, I didn’t-” Tooru moves off the stool without warning and stumbles to the floor, his palms and knees slamming into the ground glass that suddenly covers the floor, pain spiking through his hands and legs. “Shouyou, I didn’t!”

“And they found him and Tobio found us and I didn’t die, well done, and they took you back and we left and you got into the 121-129. You showed your true colours. You really did.” Hinata coughs. He looks green, and Tooru thinks he remembers seeing Hinata lying in the back of a car, greenish and half-asleep, someone in the front seat yelling about phones and Bokuto shouting from the radio.

Tooru picks himself up, blowing on his hands and biting his lip as the glass shards burrow further inside him. The pain is excruciating, but he can think through it, beginning to step forwards towards the shattered boy under the wrecked ship part. “That’s not what happened, Shouyou, I swear-”

“You felt guilty afterwards, so you helped Tobio and me.” Hinata is emotionless. He’s stopped moving underneath the metal, but Tooru swears he can see the jagged edges perforating deeper and deeper into the bare flesh like it did that first time, but now there’s nobody to come and stop the bleeding. Nobody but him. 

He tries to step forward, but the air feels viscous around his legs, like wading through treacle. “Shouyou-”

“But Tobio isn’t here this time,” finishes Hinata. To Tooru’s horror he sees Hinata’s skin dripping away from his body like it’s just another few droplets of blood, melting and running through his eyes and his nose and his lips. His fingers melt over the stains he swept on the metal. His eyes are wide - his eyes are the only things left intact, really - and they seem to stare right into Tooru’s soul. “Tobio isn’t here this time, and everyone will die, and you will never get Miyu back.”

Tooru turns when he hears a familiar scream,  _ Kageyama on the roof that night with the wind whipping his hair and his eyes begging Tooru to do something and  _

The lab behind him is replaced with soul sucking darkness. When he turns back to Hinata, movements sluggish, there’s the chunk of alien ship that started it all, there’s the three streaks Hinata drew, and there’s a puddle of skin and bones on the ground. 

Tooru turns and vomits into the darkness, glass tumbling out of his mouth coated in the slick wetness it’s scraped from the back of his throat. The pain  _ aches.  _

“You made the right decision, Tooru,” says a familiar voice. 

He turns. His palms are sticky with sweat and blood and glass and when he clenches his fist, hot, red copper drips out of it and down to the black ground. “I didn’t make a decision!”

Hatsu stands at the front, her arms folded across that silk shirt she always wears, her lips twisted into a sideways smirk. Her lipstick always contrasts sharply with her dark skin, although Tooru has always thought that the most dangerous part of her is her eyes. They’re sharp as daggers. “You decided long ago, Tooru, with the bushes and the rabbits and little Miyu in the attic.”

“I was younger than her,” Tooru says, although it sounds pathetic and whiny. 

Hatsu smiles. “And she just wanted to read her book, didn’t she? You with the bushes and the rabbits. Oh, no, but you were just feeding them, weren’t you?”

“Miyu-”

She makes a dismissive little noise that silences Tooru like a gag. “Miyu isn’t important. Miyu may still be alive, but it’s been eleven years, and do you really think she’ll still be the little girl you remember? No, we have more important things to discuss.”

Her heels sink into the puddle of Hinata. Tooru feels glass under his tongue. 

Hikaru emerges from the blackness, then, chewing on an unlit cigarette, both eyes glowing murderously. He’s slightly bent, clutching someone’s arm behind their back, a pistol held in his other hand and pressed to the person’s neck. The darkness means he can’t see their face, but he hears a pained grunt as Hikaru presses his knee into the small of their back. “Heya, Tooru. What’s this about tiny baby Miyu and tiny innocent Tooru and how he never meant to call tiny little Makki into it all?”

Tooru tries to tell him to shut the fuck up, but his mouth doesn’t move, and he realises his feet are slowly beginning to sink into the deep murk of the blackness. Panic engulfs him like a cloud. 

“You said you’d never do it again,” Hikaru continues casually, kicking a splash of Hinata off his scuffed sneakers. “You said you’d  _ never do it again.”  _

Abruptly, the darkness lifts around Hikaru’s captive, and Tooru wants to sink away into oblivion. 

Iwaizumi’s head is bent, but he can see a bruise around a closed right eye and a clot of hair that shows he’s been knocked about by the butt of Hikaru’s pistol. His face is pale underneath grime and blood and dirt, and he’s still wearing his SuperStore uniform. 

“You said nothing would stop you from finding Miyu,” Hatsu says. “Nothing would get in your way.”

Hikaru nudges Iwaizumi forwards, knocking his fist against the clotted hair. Iwaizumi recoils, but his eyes don’t open. “Nothing would get in your way, Tooru-kun. That’s what you said.” It becomes the voice of a mocking child in his mouth, kids dancing in the playground throwing clumps of mud at their friends and waving worms in the squeamish kid’s face. “Nothing. That’s what you  _ said.  _ Nothing.”

Tooru is up to his waist, now, his wrists trapped by the dark. Iwaizumi  _ is  _ awake, his good eye open and staring at Tooru with a painful intensity, raw innocence - he doesn’t know anything, and Tooru - this is Tooru’s fault -

“Nothing,” Hatsu sings.

“So, if there’s really nothing you’ll mind doing, if there’s really nothing that’ll get in your way, you won’t mind if I do this,” Hikaru says. His gun presses into Iwaizumi’s neck. 

_ “Oikawa,”  _ Iwaizumi begins, terrified and urgent and intense, and then the shot goes off and all Tooru can see is the redness spilt over the blackness, horrific in its contrast, and all he feels is glass inside his mouth and his eyes and his nose and under his skin as he sinks down into oblivion. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dream: Oikawa is in his old lab with Hatsu and Hikaru. He turns and sees Hinata trapped under a metal chunk of spaceship (wow that sounds cliche). Hinata accuses him of showing his true colours and making the wrong choice, then he melts. (Dear god this sounds awful wtf) Hatsu and Hikaru show up and remind Oikawa that he said nothing would get in the way of his search for Miyu. They have Iwaizumi and Hikaru shoots Iwa before Oikawa is swallowed by an ambiguous black room (?)
> 
> ok that sounded shit but whatevs 
> 
> im v sorry if the quality of the chaps goes down cuz this is usually where my writing goes off the cliff in fics and i dont have a beta cuz im a fail YEY 
> 
> pls review ily all and follow clearfullydearfully.tumblr.com for this shit


	5. the hinata thing and other insecurities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the alternative chapter title for this is: watch as author descends into metaphorical madness and is also weirdly obsessed with oikawa toorus hands 
> 
> i know it hasnt been a week but i wanna publish cause i wrote this whole damn thing in like an hour and now my wrists hurt well done me   
> also  
> in advance  
> im really sorry for the last 1000 words or so

When Hajime pulls in at the home Kageyama directs him to, just as the sun is sinking into the sky, he can’t help but be surprised. He’s not sure why he expected another flat in an abandoned apartment building - not everyone lives like that, obviously - but this place is so  _ normal. _ So homely. It reminds him of his own house, ages ago, and bubbles in the summer and sleepovers in the front lawn with cousins and siblings and relations always coming in or out. “Wow.”

“Oh, thank God,” says Kageyama tearfully when the front door opens, “They’ve been listening to the 121-129... They’re expecting us…” He opens the back door and scoops Hinata into his arms. “I’m going on in, getting Shouyou to the Doc as soon as possible, but… thank you, Iwaizumi-san.” He looks weak, still on the verge of tears, and Hajime wonders if it’s really advisable for him to be carrying Hinata inside. 

The man coming towards them is stocky and tan with a short crop of dark hair. “Kageyama! Bring him here, quickly, he’s got everything set up!” 

And just like that Hajime isn’t needed. He’s not hurt, and it’s obvious that the newcomer only cares about Hinata for the moment. One priority at a time. As Kageyama, the man, and the unconscious Hinata vanish into the house, he relaxes back into the car seat and glances over at the still-sleeping Oikawa before looking back at the house. God, it really shouldn’t, but it reminds him far too much of home. Far too much. 

It’s away out in the country, for one. Kageyama had to direct Hajime through winding country roads, voice still shaky, for  _ hours  _ before they reached it. 

(He remembers warm springs on his tricycle, followed by a host of siblings, all of them going for hours on end around the roads surrounding his house and not meeting a single car.)

Low to the ground and surrounded by a wooden veranda, it sprawls across what looks like three, maybe four, rooms and two levels. The roof slopes, tiled in the familiar red slate of the old farmhouses, and Hajime thinks he sees the beginning of a vegetable patch stretching out on the other side of the house. The lights are on and streaming out of every window but the ones farthest East, and through the closed shutters Hajime can see silhouettes moving, someone placing a body on a table. Kageyama. Hinata. Another figure, a new one, putting their hand on Kageyama’s shoulder. Kageyama, leaving the room. 

He leans back and sighs contentedly. The chirp of crickets in the long grass is the most reassuring sound he’s heard for a long, long time.

Oikawa shifts beside him, making a tiny noise of discomfort when his head hits the metal of the headrest. He mumbles something under his breath, and Hajime supposes he’d better wake him up and get him inside, too. 

Except… they got to Kageyama and Hinata’s flat at four, or a little after, and Oikawa was gone when Hajime woke up, and before that he definitely didn’t get any sleep… Oikawa needs more rest, that much is obvious from the bags under his eyes, and Hajime wonders if he can get Oikawa inside without waking him. Maybe. 

“Oikawa,” he whispers. No harm in trying, but he really doesn’t want to wake him up if he can help it at all. 

The other man doesn’t respond. His eyes don’t even flutter. 

“Aw, dammit,” Hajime mumbles to himself, deciding on a path of action. He slides out of his door, closing it as quietly as he can, and locks the car only after he’s gone to the passenger side and lifted Oikawa bodily out of the seat, undoing the belt buckle and sliding his arm underneath Oikawa’s neck to lift him out without dislodging his head. 

Oikawa, for all his height, is light as a feather. Hajime hoists him up further into his arms, positioning him so that his head rests against Hajime’s shoulder, his back and legs supported by Hajime’s arms. (He’s trying very hard to think of some way to describe the situation that isn’t  _ bridal style,  _ because it’s  _ not.)  _ He still doesn’t wake up when Hajime begins to carry him towards the house, although he jostles, his hair falling over his face. 

Hajime brushes it out of the way. It’s soft and silky smooth.

( _ “That’s gay, Hajime,” teases his younger brother lightheartedly, clapping him over the shoulder, before his face turns darker, more serious. “Don’t tell mom.”) _

The door opens when Hajime climbs the few steps onto the raised veranda, and the stocky guy smiles from the doorway, as though Hajime and Oikawa have just come to his attention. Maybe they have. “You must be Iwaizumi-san. Kageyama mentioned you, right before he burst into tears and passed out, poor kid.”

“Ah.” Hajime isn’t sure how he’s meant to be taking that information, but he can’t help but be concerned for Kageyama. He rights Oikawa’s position in his arms and tries to peer past the stocky guy into the house, “Is he okay? He was really freaked out about Hinata, way more than Oikawa was.” 

“He’s fine. I put him into a spare bed… but looks like Oikawa needs one of those, too, huh?” The guy steps back to allow Hajime to step through. “And you. C’mon, we still have room five free, and Hinata’s situation… he’s not going to wake up until tomorrow, at the earliest. I’m Sawamura Daichi, but call me Daichi, please.”

“Iwaizumi Hajime,” Hajime manages. 

He hopes his face doesn’t completely betray his astonishment at the inside of the house. 

When Oikawa and Kageyama and Hoot on the radio had talked about the ‘Doc’, about the clinic and something about the ambulance, Hajime had imagined some sort of private hospital catering specifically to the people in the weird sub-culture. Instead it’s a warm, homely sort of a place, the carpeted floor deep and warm, a neat row of shoes lined up by the door. The whole thing is wide and open into a kitchen and living space, a side door for a bathroom, all open planned except for a long hallway rolling down to Hajime’s left. Three doors to the right and three to the left. “Wow. Nice… nice place you have here.”

“We make do,” Daichi says, stepping out of his shoes and motioning Hajime to do the same. “I’ll take you to a room - well, Yamaguchi is still here, and Hinata’s going to need a bed, and we’re expecting Tanaka in the morning, and Noya sometime in the middle of the night - do you mind sharing with Oikawa? Just for the night.”

“Uh. That’s-” Hajime is going to refuse, but he’s exhausted, and sleeping in his uniform on a couch isn’t much better than no sleep at all. “Yeah. That’s fine.”

Daichi grins in relief. “Thank the Lord. Okay, see the last room on the left? It’s the only one free, the double bed there, and someone’ll wake you in the morning when the breakfast’s ready.”

“Thanks. Really,” Hajime says, beginning to walk down the hallway. Oikawa is warm, and the proximity feels like it’s burning him. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem.” 

Hajime doesn’t bother replying to that one, just continues down the corridor and pushes open the farthest room with his knee. Oikawa murmurs against his shoulder, but still doesn’t wake up, so Hajime feels safe in pulling back the covers on the double bed and placing the sleeping boy gently onto the mattress - Oikawa snuffles, rolling over, arms searching for something he’d lost when Hajime let him go - “Hey, Shittykawa, I’m here,” Hajime whispers, and when Oikawa grabs onto Hajime’s arm, he relaxes again. 

Okay. 

Definitely not gay, Hajime. 

Yeah, keep telling yourself that. 

_ (“Don’t tell uncle, don’t tell mom, don’t… tell,” says his brother, “Or you’re dead.” His lips are bruised, his hands still clutching the shirt of the taller, unfamiliar boy like a lifeline, his eyes begging Hajime with all he has to keep the secret. He droops, aggression leaving him like a flood across a dam, and he’s the brother Hajime has always known. Smaller. Scared. “Please, Hajime, don’t tell any of them.”) _

He slips in beside Oikawa. The mattress is soft and bouncy, the sort that’s in the higher class of hotel, and the duvet brushes against his bare skin far softer than the one back at his college dorm had. The pillows are fluffy. God, they’re fluffy. They’re so fluffy he feels like  _ drowning  _ in them, and a little part of Hajime wonders if he’s meant to get so excited about human comforts like showering. And pillows. 

Jesus, does he love pillows.

“Iwaizumi,” Oikawa mumbles. “Iwaizumi, don’t…”

Hajime shucks off his shirt and drops it by the bedside, unable to see anything in the room past the darkness. “Go to sleep. I’m right here, Shittykawa.”

He lies down, immediately feeling his eyelids drooping down, pulled by exhaustion. “Go to sleep.”

And they do. 

For a while. 

Hajime wakes in a cold sweat in the middle of the night (he checks on the little phone that was in Hinata’s bag.) He can’t remember what he was dreaming about, or if he dreamt, but his breath comes in shallow gasps and sweat sticks the longer strands of hair to the back of his neck and his forehead. He feels as though the room is too small, too hot, too humid, and suddenly the Oikawa clinging to his side like a limpet feels like a weight around his ankle keeping him stuck to the bed. It’s not reassuring, just choking, and his throat feels too tight and his chest feels too warm - 

He bolts. Leaps out of bed, pulls the shirt - too tight around the shoulders, remember, because Oikawa had bought it - pulls it over his head, and runs out. He’s in bare feet, he remembers taking his shoes off by the door, but he doesn’t want to get them. 

He’s freaking out. 

Why? 

Maybe it’s because he grew up in a farmhouse with long grass and vegetables and he’s never been somewhere so homely since he left, but he feels so much younger. He remembers being sixteen and usually he never thinks about that anymore unless he gets ridiculously drunk at the on-campus bar and finds someone to hook up with and, when the hook-up has left, he lies there and thinks about being sixteen. Not now. Never sober.

And yet-

Leaning against the wall right outside the room, he levels his breathing - 

_ (“It’s a nightmare, Hajime,” says his older sister sympathetically. “Everyone gets them. Nothing wrong with it. You want me to make us some hot milk? Hot milk makes all the nightmares go away, y’know.”)  _

He doesn’t think Sawamura - no, Daichi, will appreciate Hajime clattering around an unfamiliar kitchen at night trying to find the milk and a saucepan, but he still feels too claustrophobic to stay inside. 

Veranda. 

Listen to the crickets. 

( _ “When you can’t sleep,” Hajime says to his little sister, stroking her hair behind her ear, “You come and find me and I’ll make us some hot milk and we’ll go sit on the veranda and listen to the crickets. The crickets make the nightmares go away, don’t y’know, ‘cause they chirrup so loud that the nightmares get annoyed and bug off to nightmare land.”)  _

The whole house is silent, even the room that Hajime thinks Hinata was brought into. He hopes that means only the best news, but he’s not sure even what the green darts do, the ones Oikawa said Hinata was hit with. 

Infection. That’s so  _ vague.  _

Everything is so vague. Are they trying to keep him in the dark on purpose?

When Hajime enters the open space of the house, the part that seems to be an every-other-room-rolled-into-one, he sees two someones curled up on one of the four sofas, bodies hidden under a thick blanket, soft snores filling the room. There’s another body sitting at the table with their face in a bowl of cereal, milk slopped over the edge, a single cornflake stuck to their bald head. A fourth someone curled into a ball in the corner, a patchwork quilt thrown roughly over them.

A timer over the oven tells him that it’s 3.14. 

Oddly enough the snores and the presence of other people calm his racing heart, and Hajime slows to a soft walk so as not to disturb the sleepers. There’s a sliding door that leads out onto the veranda - bubbles on a hot summer’s day - and Hajime sneaks out by it, the rubber wheels rattling quietly on the runs. 

Outside, the night air is cool and relaxing. 

_ (“See?” Hajime tells her. She wriggles into his lap, her thumb in her mouth, her index finger rubbing circles on her freckled nose, face turned to him for stories as the crickets send her to sleep. “Look, you can hear ‘em taking your nightmares away. They turn it into soup, don’tcha know, and the Queen of the Crickets takes a sip and she spits it out. ‘Bleh!’ she says. ‘Take it away! It’s nightmare soup!’” And his sister giggles.) _

_ (“You’re silly, Hajime.”)  _

He sits down like a puppet with all the strings cut. Out the back of the house he can see the vegetable patch, neat carrots and potatoes and radishes in rows, unfamiliar plants stretching out as far as the eye can see. There’s a neat line of pens, and he sees four apple boxes with chickens nestling into them. A goat, maybe? 

Hajime misses home. Painfully, in a way he hasn’t in  _ years,  _ in a way he hasn’t since that first year. He draws his knees up to his chest, rests his chin on them, and watches the tiny wisps of cloud scudding across the moon. It burns bright in the sky. 

It’s stupid to think about all that, though. 

Gone now. 

_ (“If you’re not careful the crickets will turn you to soup,” he hears his sister telling their baby cousin solemnly. “Hajime told me, so it must be true. But don’t be scared of the crickets, ‘cause they take away bad dreams. So you should love them!”)  _

The door behind him rattles quietly on the runs. Hajime whips around, ready to excuse himself, but it’s only Oikawa, a fresh cigarette between index finger and thumb. 

“Sorry,” Hajime says as Oikawa drops down beside him. “Did I wake you up?”

“I’d slept for  _ ten hours,  _ Iwa-chan, I woke myself up,” Oikawa replies quietly. He doesn’t turn his head to look at Hajime, just stares out into the middle distance, his right hand millimetres away from Hajime’s on the veranda. 

Hajime resists the urge to curl his fingers away. “Still.”

“Chibi-chan is okay, too. I popped in to see him, and he’s sleeping. He’s fine, can you believe it?” Oikawa breathes deeply, cheeks hollowing around the cigarette. “Tobio’s sleeping beside him, ‘cause you just can’t keep those two apart when one of them’s hurt. Did he have a panic attack or anything?”

“Sawa- Daichi said he passed out pretty soon after handing Hinata over, so I guess not. He freaked out a bit when we were going here, but I think he was okay. Ish.” 

Oikawa exhales. Smoke stained blue by the background of the sky pours out between his bitten lips, dangerous, potentially murderous, and something Hajime’s always been warned to stay away from. Oikawa nips on the corner of his bottom lip, widening a blackberry-purple bruise, and Hajime lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. 

It’s late. 

“You should still be sleeping, Iwa-chan. You didn’t get ten hours,” says Oikawa, half-whispering in the night. His voice is raspy.

Hajime swallows. “Not tired.”

“Not true.”

There’s no wind, and the smoke is free to curl around their faces and up, up, up. Hajime’s eyes follow it. “I’m in college, Oikawa, I’m used to not getting the full ten hours. I usually wake up after two or three ‘cause I’ve probably missed a lecture.”

“Hmm.” Oikawa wets his lips, letting his cigarette hook onto them in the corner of his mouth. His eyes trail around the sweat on Hajime’s forehead and the too-quick breaths he sucks in, the whiteness of his knuckles clutching the veranda, and he smiles a little sadly. “You always get so freaked out by missing lectures?”

“It’s nothing, Oikawa,” Hajime murmurs. The quiet way Oikawa speaks has passed onto him, like it would be sacrilegious to speak too loudly. 

Oikawa shifts sideways and the veranda creaks. Their fingers brush, and Hajime feels as though he’s been electrocuted, but he doesn’t move his finger. He can’t dare to. “We’re chasing down aliens, so I think the definition of nothing has changed just a bit.” 

“Just missing home,” Hajime says, staring at his bare feet. “Nothing.”

“Ah. You know, when I find Miyu, when we… get rid of those three, somehow,  _ somehow,  _ I’m going to bring you home. You don’t have to drive me around for the rest of your life,” Oikawa says, sounding ridiculously guilty. 

Hajime sighs. “No, no, it’s not your fault. It’s not…” he decides not to finish that, because  _ that  _ is a can of worms he wants to avoid as long as possible. “I’d be in college, now, anyway.”

“And we’re a sticky people to get away from.” Oikawa scuffs his own bare foot into the grass. “I mean… once you start, once you get into the 121-129, you don’t ever seem to leave. I know this guy, Ukai Keishin…. He’s part of the old guard, too, way back before Bo took over the radio… He’s ancient. Thirty-five last spring. And he and Takeda just keep going and going and going, and never stopping. Don’t think they ever will.” 

“Thirty-five isn’t old,” Hajime points out, feeling like somebody has to. 

Oikawa laughs. “For us, it is. The Little Giant, the mapmaker, I’d be surprised - really surprised - if he was still alive. 1957? Ancient. And I’ve just realised… that must have been who Shouyou named himself after. He called himself Small Giant as soon as we got him fixed up, and we thought it was some sort of self-esteem thing, but it’s that author. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Wait, but if thirty-five is ancient, how long do you lot live for?” He can’t help but think that Oikawa is glossing over the real problem here, namely, the life expectancy. 

The dangerous boy takes another deep drag of his cigarette, smoke trailing out of his mouth as he replies, smiling sardonically. “Us lot? Iwa-chan, you’re as much part of the 121-129 as any of us. We live… the problem is that we all do things like this, like Daichi and Suga, or we do what Shouyou and Tobio do, paranormal investigators, or Bo and Akaashi, or Noya and Asahi, or Tanaka and Ennoshita, or… any of us, really. Neko-chan…” he smiles at the names. “ Bo and Akaashi? They’ve moved studios three times, I think, because people like Hatsu and Hikaru - there are more of them, gangs and shit - people like them really don’t want that stuff being broadcasted.”

“How long do we live?” Hajime asks. He still feels like an outsider including himself. 

Oikawa shrugs. Blood wells on his mouth. “Thirty is pushing it. If you manage to get out, your life's over anyway, so we say you’re dead.”

“I… oh.” 

There’s another moment of drawn out, oddly peaceful silence. Oikawa has relaxed since coming out, oddly, and Hajime no longer feels like he wants to crawl out of his skin and go floating back to his parents, apologising and begging for a room. He just likes it here. The grass whistles in the breeze, the moon shines down on them, and Oikawa is warm and comforting beside him. 

“Did Hinata ever tell you about the Hinata Thing?” Oikawa says after a while. 

Hajime shakes his head quietly. He wonders if Oikawa is just trying to distract him, or something, but he’s definitely not going to say that the wet redness is distraction enough, the hazel eyes, the reddened knuckles and delicate fingers gripping the shrinking cigarette like a lifeline. “Nope. God knows you mention it enough, you lot, but he never managed to tell me.”

“I guess you gotta know,” Oikawa says. He wipes the blood away with the back of his hand, streaking it across the pale back of his hand. “Hanamaki… he’s involved. In it. And last night… I don’t want that to happen to you.”

Hajime doesn’t ask what that is. He doesn’t think he’ll get a coherent answer. 

Oikawa exhales, rubs the smouldering stub against the wood of the veranda, and throws it as far as he can into the fields. His hands shake slightly as he brings out a half-empty packet with a pair of rotted lungs on the front, the usual ineffective warning, followed by a lighter, although he only manages to light the new cigarette on the fourth try. “Hinata. Yeah. Okay.”

( _ Hajime sits beside his brother, staring at the red mark on his neck. “You know I won’t tell,” he says. “Take your time, just… just tell me. At some point. I want to know.”)  _

“Five years ago, I was sixteen. Five years on from when Hatsu and Hikaru roped me into the Department after that therapy session, and they’d decided I was brainwashed enough to be trusted out on my own. They gave me a car, a little red Subaru that’d been owned three times before me, and sent me out to the low-level warning spots. ‘Course, I didn’t know about the 121-129 at that point - I didn’t know about anything. I was an idiot.”

He pauses for breath, eyes heavy as they stare into the grass. 

“They’d been getting their information from people who were in the 121-129 but who were paid off to tell Hatsu and Hikaru where all the things were happening. Bo was just starting out - that’s Hoot - and he introduced the codes. That made it harder.”

“I got a call, my first call, to some kid who’d been seeing ghosts. Hatsu handed me the official Department Secrecy documents, Hikaru handed me a phone, and Takaki gave me a gun. I didn’t use any of them, ‘cause the kid… it was Tobio. He met me, told me that before he’d sign my bullshit documents he wanted one last listen to the radio.”

Oikawa grins bitterly. “He knew more than me. He was better than me. Still is, as a matter of fact. When I heard it, the radio named after the community I hadn’t known existed… well, that was the first seed of doubt, I guess. Tobio  _ had  _ been seeing ghosts, ‘cause he’s really in-tune to the paranormal, that’s how he was so successful with Shouyou, but he also really didn’t want to sign the secrecy documents.”

“What did you do?” Hajime asks after a half a minute of silence. 

Oikawa, lost in thought, starts and smiles sheepishly. “I handed them to him, blank, and told him I’d lie for Hatsu and Hikaru. They were so convinced I’d been brainwashed by them that they believed me, but before I left Tobio he gave me a spare phone of his that he’d connected to the 121-129. He gave me the number, too, to call in, and before you ring on a new phone you talk to Akaashi for a while before you’re put on the air.”

The moon is covered momentarily by a light, fluffy cloud. Hajime smiles up at it, feeling weirdly melancholic. 

“I talked to Akaashi… God, he was only fifteen… he was as new to it as I was, but he passed me to Bo, who’d also just got into it. We all had, really. Our generation… well, a few of us came along later.”

He’s getting sidetracked, but Hajime can’t bring himself to pull Oikawa out of his nostalgic stupor. 

“I remember picking the name. Professor. I’d just bought the new Pokemon game and I really, really wanted to be known for something. Hatsu and Hikaru got me the real Professorship a few years later, just because of the Hinata Thing… it was the carrot, and the - um. Well, a couple of other things were the stick.”

“Hinata Thing,” Hajime reminds him. 

Smoke curls upwards. Oikawa offers him the packet and lighter, and Hajime surprises himself by actually taking one and lighting it inexpertly. 

Weird. 

He’s acting weird. 

“Yeah. Hinata Thing. So, three years ago, I was eighteen, Tobio was fifteen, and he rings me up via Bo. He told me that his phone had been ringing off the hook, that it was the voice of someone calling himself Hinata Shouyou, someone that claimed to be on board a ship currently in orbit around the planet.”

Hajime decides he really doesn’t like the taste of smoke, but continues inhaling and exhaling the stuff like a heartbeat. In. Out. 

“I told him…” Oikawa laughs again, even more humorless, “I told him he was full of shit, but Tobio said that this guy Hinata  _ felt _ like something. He’d stopped seeing the ghosts, we sorted that out, but he’s always had an affinity for people. He knows stuff. When Tobio says someone feels like something, you sit up and take notice.” 

Hajime hums. 

“So I broke it.” Oikawa still doesn’t look at Hajime, but he’s trembling, shaking, and Hajime wants nothing more than to reassure him somehow. Broke it. That’s what the radio said, they said the Prof had broke it from Redeye and Lipstick, they said that Giant and King had broke it from their flat. 

Broke it.

Gone. 

Run away. 

“I broke it from Hatsu and Hikaru, and we had a secretary. Lab assistant. Makki, I called him, and he had a car and he was pretty sarcastic and we used to watch shitty movies and eat popcorn. I borrowed his car, borrowed him, and we broke it to go find Tobio, ‘cause he sounded really freaked by this kid on the phone telling him to come get him.”

Thinking he knows where this is going, Hajime wishes it wasn’t.  _ He broke it from Hatsu and Hikaru and went to find Miyu, and he borrowed my car to go find the ship.  _ Achingly familiar.

“It took us six months. Me, Makki, Tobio, and this little voice on the phone. Shouyou told us everything… he was fifteen, sixteen, around that age, he’d been picked up when he was fourteen by two guys that had turned out to be weird robot things, he’d been forgotten about when the ship picked up a new person. As soon as he’d come out from whatever weird coma stupor he’d been in, he stole a communicator and dialled a number. Tobio always said it was fate that meant Shouyou called him, and…” Oikawa smiles. “That’s the most romantic thing he’s ever said.” 

Hajime watches Oikawa brush the edge of his jaw with his hand, curl his fingertips into his parted lips. 

“It was the best six months of my life, Iwa-chan. I’d… it was free, y’know? Me and Tobio and Makki and Shouyou, who said he was trying to sabotage wherever he was and get it to land.”

Hajime pushes the thoughts that this is too stereotypical to possibly be true, because Oikawa is far too bare to be lying. 

“One day, Shouyou called. One morning. But we’d - I’d - been seeing Hatsu and Hikaru and Takaki chasing us for days now, and Shouyou said he was crashing, he wasn’t sure, but that everyone was dead but him.” Oikawa pulls in a shaky breath. “And then I- um, I mean, I- no, I just… Makki went to stop the Department guys, and Tobio and I went to get Hinata, and we promised we’d meet at this little motel down the freeway.”

Hajime wonders why he feels so cold. It’s summer. It should be warm. 

Oikawa’s eyes look damp. “Tobio and I went to Shouyou, but he’d been -  _ fuck,  _ he’d been - in the crash, a part of the… I guess you’d call it the ship, a part of it came free and he’d got fucking impaled, just dug through with this massive jag of metal. He wasn’t waking up, there was blood everywhere, so we called into the 121-129. Tobio was crying, there was blood all over his hands, but I remember him… he took the phone off me and said ‘ _ If Sugawara-san isn’t listening, I hope he burns. Come to where we are right now and bring your most stable car, because he’s dying.’  _ He was almost as bad as Shouyou… I didn’t think Shouyou would survive. That’s why his binder is one of the full-figure ones, you know. He doesn’t get all that conscious about anything, really, except the three massive scars all up his back. Chest, too.”

“What happened?” Hajime asks, hushed. 

“Suga arrived with Daichi. They’d just started, too. Tobio and I went to the motel to wait, wait for Makki, but I’d…” Oikawa stops, swallows, stares at his knuckles, “Makki never showed up. Next morning Hatsu and Hikaru showed up to take me back to the lab, and I didn’t see Tobio and Shouyou for another year. Takaki killed Makki. I know he did. And Hinata’s injury, Makki’s death, they were my fault, and that’s the Hinata Thing.”

The story ends abruptly, Oikawa dropping his face to his knees, but Hajime sees his shoulders shaking. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Hajime whispers, risking an arm around Oikawa’s shoulders. His own stupid feelings take second place to comforting Oikawa, after all. 

Oikawa has no such qualms. He burrows into the warmth, his face suddenly inches from Hajime’s, one hand hooked around Hajime’s waist to keep them both from falling under the weight. Hajime can count every long eyelash, tears caught on them like raindrops in a spiderweb, a drop running down lightly freckled cheeks. “You don’t know that. And it’s happening again, Iwa-chan, there’s signs of Miyu and there’s  _ you  _ and there’s the Department guys chasing us. It’s  _ happening again.”  _

“I won’t die,” Hajime breathes. He. He could move his head. Move just a little, and Oikawa’s lips would brush his, tasting of bruises and smoke and Oikawa. 

“Do you promise?” says Oikawa childishly, eyes wide. 

“Yeah. Yeah, of course I do.”

The crickets chirp. The moon is the only watcher. It must be past four o’clock, it must be, four in the morning, and Hajime is here. 

Oikawa’s right hand, the one not holding his second cigarette, reaches down for Hajime’s hand, the one propping them both up on the veranda. His wrists are thin, delicate, the same sort of brittle fragility as his fingers, and Hajime thinks about how easy it would be to break him. To break himself along with it. He’s seen it happen to others -  _ Hajime says his brother he doesn’t call me anymore for the love of God why don’t you just shut up for once in your life  _ \- and he’s seen it happen to himself -  _ Hajime I can’t keep doing this you can’t keep doing this to yourself -  _ and he’s going to break over and over and over again, in the warmth of hazel eyes and the smell of smoke. 

He knows it.

“Makki died. Miyu might as well have died, for all she talked about the rabbits,” Oikawa whispers cryptically, shifting around to face Hajime. His foot is draped over Hajime’s. 

Hajime moves too. Makes it more comfortable, so his arm is over Oikawa’s shoulders, one hand under Oikawa’s and Oikawa’s free arm around his waist. Their foreheads almost touch. “I won’t.”

“You can’t. You need to go to your parents and your siblings and your college, and I need to… I need to stop the Department.” Oikawa’s eyes keep fluttering down to Hajime’s lips and back up again. “I don’t know how I can.”

“I don’t know either,” Hajime admits. “But we’ll sort it out when we find your sister.”

“Miyu. We - the rabbits… She wasn’t on Shouyou’s ship, as far as he knows, which means at least two different races have an interest in our planet… it’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Oikawa’s free hand throws his still-smoking cigarette away and he draws it back to support himself against the veranda. 

Hajime nods. Doesn’t say anything. The prospect of actual - nope, he can’t say it - actual otherworldly beings, having been onto the same ground Hajime’s walked on… Oikawa’s right. It  _ is  _ terrifying.

“But the scariest things are the ones you want to chase the most,” continues Oikawa. He’s still crying, and that should weird Hajime out, but he’s already so tense and relaxed and all over the place that he doesn’t think anything could add to the fireworks happening in his head. 

He keeps staring at Oikawa’s lips, too. Red and bruised. “Sometimes it’s best to stay away from the things that scare you, y’know.”

“Your fear might be founded, sure, but what’s the point in being scared of it unless you try, just once?” Oikawa says, and Hajime isn’t sure they’re talking about aliens anymore. 

Red and bruised and smelling of peaches and smoke.  _ Dangerous.  _ Keep away. “Fear is there for a reason. It’s there to keep you away,” Hajime mumbles, but he makes no effort to move away. 

Oikawa blinks, dislodging a glittering tear from the far corner of his eye. They’re so close. They wouldn’t even have to make an effort to meet, now. “Keep you away from  _ what,  _ Iwa-chan?”

“What do you think?”

Oikawa’s eyes are light, despite the fact he was in tears just a few moments ago. They dance, they ripple. “Enlighten me.”

“ _ You, _ ” Hajime bites out, but just as Oikawa’s eyes flutter back to his mouth and up again, he loses whatever courage he managed to gather in the last few minutes. “You and all of this weird alien stuff and this whole fucking business.”

“I- oh. Oh.” Oikawa’s fingers twitch like he wants to move them from Hajime’s hand, but he doesn’t. The mood is gone, curling into the air like smoke from Oikawa’s cigarette, but it’s not quite awkward yet. “It’ll be over soon, then, Iwa-chan.”

“I’d like to hope so,” Hajime says, disgusted with himself. 

He means to suggest they go back inside and back to the warm bed Daichi gave them, but then Oikawa’s head drops onto his shoulder. 

“Just - just don’t say a fucking thing, Iwa-chan, just for a moment,” is all he says. 

Hajime kind of hates himself a lot. “I - sorry. Yeah. Okay.” He doesn’t take his arm from around Oikawa’s shoulders, and Oikawa doesn’t take  _ his  _ arm from around Hajime’s waist, and Hajime sits like that with a dozing Oikawa on his shoulder and listens to the crickets tease him -  _ they take away all the good things you have if you’re not careful don’tcha know they take them all away that’s what my big brother told me and he knows everything don’t you Hajime -  _ and watches the sun climb its way into the sky. 

Oikawa is warm and soft and dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, and Hajime has always been told to stay away from dangerous things. 

In the pocket of his jeans, a number scribbled on a pink Post-It burns a hole in the back of his mind.

Stay away from dangerous things. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAH U FUCKERS THOUGHT THEYD KISS HELL NAW SLOW BURN IS HERE TO STAY 
> 
> so if you still dont hate me please review because i love reviews and need Validation to Continue the Struggle  
> also follow me on tumblr clearfullydearfully.tumblr.com   
> and ALSO on twitter holy shiT at @clearfullydearful   
> bearing in mind that my twitter at the moment is mostly pictures of min yoongis face but who cares bout that follow me anyway ily thanks for reading x


	6. hajime dries dishes (mild car envy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: my favourite quote from this one is "Okay, bacon. Not homosexuality."  
> and that should tell you everything you need to know about the quality of this particular one
> 
> also this is why cameos are listed as a character btw
> 
> also the last 1000 words is me   
> and cars  
> just chillin   
> cars  
> (also that tango orange vw exists somewhere in france. i saw it and wanted to cry.)

_ “Ryuu! The Prof and some random guy are sleeping out here, come quick, come look!”  _

Hajime’s eyes hurt. Hajime’s side hurts. Hajime’s neck is stiff. He smells of smoke and peaches, and he’s been wearing the same t-shirt for over twenty four hours, and the same jeans for a week, and he’s worn the same clothes for longer but he’s got out of the habit, okay, and the voice pierces his ears at just the wrong volume. He groans and tries to get up, but Oikawa is clinging to his side like a koala bear. Hajime can’t bring himself to dislodge the other man. 

“Hey, is that the new one? Called into the 121-129? Awesome! Hey, Asahi-Asahi-Asahi-” 

The voices come from the open sliding door, but Hajime can’t turn his head or he thinks his neck might just snap all the way off. Instead, he clears his throat. “If either of you have any coffee, keep talking. If you don’t, go get me a blanket, for fuck’s sake.” Dew trickles down the back of his neck, sliding down the fine hairs along his nape and making him shiver. God, he hates sleeping outdoors.

At his side, Oikawa murmurs something, head turning, eyes fluttering as he slowly  _ slowly  _ wakes up. 

The first voice sniggers. “Got coffee right here, my man! Need a hand up? Ryuu, come pull the Prof off the random guy, c’mon!”

Oikawa makes an undignified squeak when a muscular guy in a tank top pulls him off Hajime, his head completely shaven - of course, the one that was sleeping in the cereal - and Oikawa immediately wakes up, beginning to hammer on the bald guy’s shoulders. “Tanaka, you bastard, I was in bed-”

“You were sleeping on this guy,” says the other one, a tiny, bouncy guy with a little tuft of blonde hair down his forehead, the rest of his hair black and flat to his head. He points to Hajime, looking gleeful, hopping from one bare foot to the next. “Hey, hey, Prof, you were sleeping on this guy! Even Asahi doesn’t sleep on me, although he’d probably kill me if he did-”

_ “Noyyaaaaaa,”  _ someone calls plaintively from inside the house. “No, I  _ wouuuuldn’t.  _ And you sleep on me  _ anyway.”  _

Someone else in there giggles. There’s the clinking of cups and plates, and the faint hiss of a coffee steamer. 

Hajime just blinks. 

It sounds like mornings at home. 

The muscly one in the tank top, Tanaka, looks down at Hajime, offering his free hand. (The one not currently supporting a very needy Oikawa.) “You getting up, man? Daichi makes a really awesome bacon omelette, and Suga’s actually awake, and even lil’ Shouyou’s actually recovered in time to piss off Kageyama. Have you met Yamaguchi? He’s a fuckin’ ray of sunshine, come on, I’ll - jesus, Oikawa, you’re heavy-”

“Jesus Oikawa is  _ tired,”  _ Oikawa pouts childishly. As Hajime hoists himself up, Oikawa falls from Tanaka’s shoulder onto Hajime’s. “Oikawa wants to sleep some more.”

The blonde one - Noya? - giggles again, leaping from foot to foot. “You can sleep if you want, Prof, but Tsukishima is going to drink all the coffee.”

“Tsukishima is a glorious bastard,” Oikawa mumbles against Hajime’s neck. His lips are soft and dry and all of a sudden Hajime remembers last night, and he would very much like to crawl up into a hole and die. He’d been so close to him, lips almost touching, Oikawa chain smoking and spilling out all (almost all, Hajime hears the hidden secrets) of the memories of his past, hands shaking until Hajime held them just to keep them warm. 

Okay. 

Okay, bacon, not homosexuality. 

Okay, Hajime, he probably doesn’t remember. Just stagger inside the house as best you can with an Oikawa draped over you, and  _ don’t make eye contact.  _

At the table sits about a hundred people (okay, eight, ten when Tanaka and Noya sit down) who all stare at Hajime with unbridled curiosity. Even Hinata and Kageyama are here, although the former does it through half-lidded eyes, and Daichi himself just looks smug. 

“Mornin’,” Oikawa says, and falls into a chair. “Bacon. Now.”

The pale man beside Daichi laughs musically, eyebrows raising. There are dark, dark stains under his eyes, but a wide smile on his face, as if he couldn’t think of a place he’d rather be. “Good morning to you too, Oikawa. Sleep well on the veranda?”

“Iwa-chan is warm,” Oikawa points a fork at the still-standing Hajime, who feels a fresh spurt of blood rush to his cheeks as all the attention is, yet again, drawn to him. “Iwa-chan should sit down and eat breakfast before I do.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Hajime mutters. Tanaka, the bald one, grins wolfishly and kicks an empty seat out from under the table beside him, motioning Hajime to drop into it. There’s a plate in front of him already, covered in a massive heap of runny eggs and bacon and melted cheese. 

Noya reaches over him to grab the salt. On Noya’s other side, a tall - jesus, he is  _ tall -  _ man with his hair in a neat bun starts talking to the pale man. Hinata is dozing off on Kageyama’s shoulder, and Kageyama himself is looking down at him with something approaching adoration. Oikawa, less adorably, is giving the exact same look to the omelette on his plate. A tall guy on Kageyama’s left, glasses perched on his nose, says something quietly to the freckled boy beside him, who smiles and touches his hand gently. Lastly, at the other end of the table, a guy that just looks like a tiny Daichi is also almost falling asleep into his breakfast. 

Jesus. Okay.

Hajime feels homely, and he hates it. 

“Stop fucking  _ thinking,  _ Iwa-chan,” Oikawa whines. “Can I eat your bacon?”

Hajime pulls his plate away from Oikawa’s wandering fork. “No way! Eat your own bacon, Shittykawa.”

The pale guy with the silvery hair snorts with laughter, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well, if you can control Oikawa, I like you. Sorry I didn’t get to introduce myself yesterday - Sugawara Koushi. Call me Suga.”

“You’re the doctor guy, right?” Hajime asks, fork dangling out of his mouth. (The omelette tastes like the one his older sister makes -  _ made -  _ and it makes him kind of want to cry a lot.)

Sugawara, Suga, nods. “I guess? Well. Yeah. I suppose I am, but that makes me sound really experienced-”

“You  _ did  _ manage to sew two separate halves of my body back together when you were, like, twenty,” Hinata mumbles into Kageyama’s shoulder. 

Suga grins. “Yeah, well, I did  _ that. _ ”

Hajime doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to all these people, these fascinating, hilarious, talented people, all saying that what they do is nothing much, really. Oikawa’s a paranormal investigator, practically Fox Mulder, and Hinata and Kageyama are like the Ghostbusters but a little more alien, and now this Suga acting as though running a hospital for people injured in alien accidents is totally normal, not really anything to be praised about. “I mean, that seems like a pretty big thing. Not a  _ that.”  _

“Ignore Koushi, he gets all self-deprecating when he’s tired,” Daichi says with a reassuring smile. “Iwaizumi, you better know everyone here, I’m assuming you’re staying in network, right?”

Hajime looks at Oikawa automatically. 

Oikawa sighs, blinking awake a little bit more. “Of course he’s fucking staying, at least for the moment, ‘cause I blew up his shop and I owe him a shop now. Doesn’t that suck? Where am I meant to pull a shop from?”

(“Your ass,” giggles Noya.)

“You also kind of stole my car. And me,” Hajime says despite himself. 

Oikawa snorts. “And that.”

“Okay, okay, Asahi, Nishinoya, Tanaka, Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, Ennoshita, and you know me and Suga and those two already. And Oikawa, I suppose.” Daichi fires off the names far too rapidly for Hajime to possibly remember them, but he nods and smiles anyway. 

The blonde one with the glasses looks at him. “What’s  _ his  _ name?”

“Tsukki,” says the freckled one beside him, “Don’t be  _ rude,  _ stupid.” He smiles, though, like the blonde one is the brightest thing in the whole world.  __

“Iwaizumi Hajime, my personal chauffeur and also pillow,” Oikawa introduces Hajime instead, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “I cannot live without him.”

“You’ve known me for two days,” Hajime says, deadpan. 

Hinata giggles. 

It’s strange, how easily this table full of strangers accepts Hajime into their midst. Breakfast as a meal lasts for an hour and a half of constantly refilling the coffee pot and putting more toast on, during which Hajime actually learns the names of the people around him, why they’re here, and most importantly: that it takes Oikawa a good half an hour before he’s awake enough  _ not  _ to sound like he’s drunk. 

He learns that Tanaka, Noya, and Asahi travel together in a beat-up truck, and that they are currently on the run from a swarm of angry(?) alien(?) killer(?) wasps(?) - most of the details are obscured by the sound effects Noya adds when Asahi and Tanaka are telling the story. He understands, however, that Tanaka got stung badly by  _ something,  _ and that Noya finds this hilarious.

Tanaka slaps the table every time he says something remotely funny, and Asahi always jumps a little in his seat, and Noya flings his arms around both of their necks and giggles. 

(Later, when Hajime is cleaning the dishes, Nishinoya will tell Hajime that the  _ real  _ reason the three of them stopped off here is because of him, of Noya. He will draw his knees up under his chin and tell Hajime that he’s sick, kinda, and they have to keep stopping in with Suga and Daichi or he’ll probably die. Then he springs up as though nothing’s happened and bounces away, leaving Hajime dumbstruck, adding another mystery to the list growing in his head.)

(Even later, someone will explain it. It won’t be Noya.)

Tsukishima and Yamaguchi travel together, as well. “We’re not here for anything, really,” Yamaguchi says brightly, spreading butter over a slice of toast. “Tsukki just-”

“We’re here because Yamaguchi got shot,  _ again,  _ trying to rescue a Gnat,” Tsukishima’s voice rides over Yamaguchi’s. Hajime sees the slight shift of his arm under the table, and he’s seen that exact movement enough times to know that Tsukishima is gripping the freckled boy’s hand out of sight of the others. 

Yamaguchi huffs. “I only got shot a little-”

“You got  _ hurt,”  _ says Tsukishima firmly, and that’s the end of that. 

Ennoshita is here because he’s waiting for two others to pick him up. “Narita and Kinoshita got in the van, but I had to run before I could,” he says tiredly. “I walked here from the town over thataway-” he waves his hand - “The people wanted to witch hunt us out of town, and they did, but we got split up. They should be coming down soon.”

Suga tells Hajime that he met Daichi when they were eleven. Daichi tells Hajime that he inherited the house from his grandfather, years ago, and that when they’d stumbled across the 121-129 as two wide-eyed thirteen year olds living in a real and actual haunted house - 

“It was so fucking cool,” Noya says appreciatively - 

“We pulled a few strings and got here,” Suga shrugs. “I was going to become a vet-”

“He taught himself medicine,” Daichi says, clearly proud on Suga’s behalf. “And I do the housekeeping.”

“Yeah, you’re a perfect housewife,” smiles Suga, saccharine sweetly, kissing Daichi on the cheek as he stands from the table. “Yamaguchi, c’mon with me for a second, I want to double-check your shoulder - who wants to do the dishes?”

It’s amazing, Hajime observes, that in any household where dishes are mentioned, every single person just seems to vanish from sight. (Except Oikawa, who’s relocated to the sofa and is reclining like a king, and Daichi, who’s leaning against the cabinet with his hands on Suga’s hips, and Hinata and Kageyama, the former having fallen asleep on the latter for good this time.) And Hajime, of course. “I’ll do them,” he offers. 

Daichi grins. “Thanks, Iwaizumi. Oikawa, you better help too, or so help me-”

“Actually, Dai-chan, there’s something I need to talk to you about. Something… well, I’ll ask everyone later, but these three have already seen it and I need you,” Oikawa says hurriedly, leaping up to his feet. “Iwa-chan, is my bag still in the car?”

“Both of them are,” Hajime tells him. It must be the map, of course, with the little blue lines and the neat circles and the real reason they’re driving through the whole goddamn country.

Suga nods, beginning to head towards the room Yamaguchi and Tsukishima had vanished into. “Do I get to see later?”

“Of course,” Oikawa trills. He pulls Daichi along with him. “This is exciting, you’ll like this, you will…” his voice fades as he leaves the house, leaving just Kageyama snorting with laughter, Hinata sleeping soundly, and Hajime contemplating his life choices. 

He starts stacking breakfast dishes mechanically, tipping the scrap food (very little) onto the topmost plate, pouring the untouched coffee and orange juice (almost none) into the largest glass. He slots each clean plate into the dishwasher, and, when it’s full, he stacks them into the sink and pours the bubbliest soap he finds onto the whole pile. 

Hajime is getting homesick from doing chores, and he hates himself for it. 

(There’s a brief interlude during which Noya comes, sits on a stool, helps Hajime shelf the dishes, and tells him about some sort of cryptic illness.) 

(Apart from that, Hajime doesn’t move from the task until he’s done.)

(It’s relaxing.)

When he looks around at the sofa, Kageyama has fallen soundly asleep, one arm wrapped around Hinata. Hinata himself is watching Hajime with uncharacteristic quietness, although he beams when he sees that Hajime has noticed him. “You’re acting strange, Iwaizumi-san.”

“No, I’m not,” says Hajime. More defensive than he means it to be. 

Hinata grins. “What did you and Oikawa-san do on the veranda last night? Talk about your  _ feeeeelings  _ and give each other flowers?” 

“Jesus, you remind me of my little brother,” Hajime says, folding his arms. “And nope, we didn’t, we just fell asleep. How’s your - you?”

“‘M fine, just a tiny bit sore,” Hinata stretches his arm as if to prove a point, and winces, laughing at his own idiocy. 

Maybe Hajime’s been expecting it. 

He leans against the cabinet and closes his eyes. “God, I’m tired. You really  _ are  _ like Kairu, you know, Hinata. He was an idiot when he got injured, too. One time, he fell out of a tree and broke his leg, and we only found out about it the next day when he tried to do a jump rope costume and his leg went the wrong way.”

“I’d never do that,” Hinata says doubtfully. (Yes, he would.)

“Yes, you would,” grins Hajime, and then he’s actually thinking about it all and he doesn’t  _ want to.  _ “You-”

“Iwaizumi-san?” Hinata squeaks worriedly, but Hajime slides down the cabinet door until he’s sitting down, and doesn’t open his eyes. There’s a weird pressure building up behind them, and he’s reminded of the first time he watched that sad movie with the dog in it. The dog died. Hajime had slept in the dog basket for the next week and a half. 

“Hey, Iwaizumi-san?”

“My head hurts,” Hajime says indistinctly -  _ Hajime are you okay hey momma Hajime’s sick momma momma -  _ “I’m gonna - be fine in a minute, hold on-”

And then Hinata is beside him, remarkably, looking pale and spent, his hand on Hajime’s shoulder. “Iwaizumi-san, are you okay? Did you get sick out on the veranda? Did Hikaru hit you with a dart-thing?”

“I’m…” Hajime wonders how he can say  _ homesick  _ without sounding like a total wimp. He’s not even homesickness, it’s just that this house reminds him so much of his own that he can’t help but miss it. “Uh. Haven’t been home in a while.”

“So you’re homesick,” Hinata guesses. He chews on his bottom lip for a brief moment, as if wondering what he should do, before just sitting down right beside Hajime with his head on Hajime’s shoulder. (Like Kida used to do.) “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” Hajime says. 

But then Hinata’s eyes start drooping, and he does.

***

They lived in a big house - massive, really, two stories and sprawling across the farmland. They had a pen of chickens at the back, two goats tied to a post that ate all the weeds his mother uprooted, and a vegetable patch. Onions and potatoes and carrots and things. Hajime and Akane, his eldest brother, sold the freshest produce at the market in their local town, half an hour’s bike ride away, and they got to keep most of the money. 

His mother used to make a soup out of the rest of it, in a massive tureen, enough for everyone in the Iwaizumi house and in the house next door, where his Uncle Kyou and his three kids lived. Seven Iwaizumi children plus Kyou’s three, and then the four parents and Hajime’s elderly grandmother - everyone called her Nonna. He didn’t know what her real name was until he was twelve. 

The soup tureen. Fourteen people ladling soup for themselves into bowls, joking around with easy familial intimacy. 

Hajime slept in a room with Akane (four years older than him) Tetsun (a year his senior) and Kida, four years younger than Hajime. Across the hall were his three sisters, Kairu (a year younger than Akane) and the two twins, eight years younger than him, Saira and Sarah, who’d been named after their English great-grandmother. 

Or something. 

He remembers waking up with Tetsun and Kida jumping on his bed, telling him Akane was eating all the bacon. He remembers walking in on Kairu doing karaoke into the little boombox the twins got for Christmas, and laughing so hard he thought his stomach would burst. 

They fed the chickens and the goats and Smaug the ancient dog and all ten of them, Uncle Kyou’s kids and Hajime’s siblings, made up a large majority of the little village school they went to. In the mornings Akane and Kairu would be responsible for getting the rest of them up, and they’d meet their cousins at the gate, and all ten of them would walk in a little crocodile along the road to the school in their matching uniforms and little summer hats.

Hajime doesn’t miss home, exactly. 

He doesn’t miss the horrible parts.

He misses all the parts of home that are  _ here.  _

***

And Hinata is asleep.

“You put Shouyou to sleep,” says Kageyama quietly from the sofa. “Can you carry him to our room? He never sleeps after he gets treatment, and then it takes him twice as long to recover.”

Tooru peers in the door, the map clutched protectively to his chest, watching Iwaizumi come back to the real world and stop reminiscing about his siblings and his cousins and his family. Shouyou sleeps against his shoulder - it’s true, Iwaizumi’s voice is low and steady and relaxing - but as Iwaizumi looks down at him, he looks like he’s sad. 

Fucking hell. Tooru has gotten so used to sad little orphans and people with no family that he’s forgotten there are people, normal people out there, with regular families that they miss and long to go back to. 

He feels a tiny bit sick.

He remembers Iwaizumi.  _ “You.”  _ And then he remembers moving away, and chain smoking the way he’s not meant to anymore, and he feels even more ill. 

“Oikawa, we have to tell Suga and Iwaizumi about this, at the very least,” says Daichi from behind him. “Go on, I’ll get Koushi.”

Tooru nods and watches Daichi move towards the surgery room, waiting a moment before he enters the house. Iwaizumi is passing a limp Shouyou over to Tobio, saying something in a low voice that Tobio responds to with a fond, friendly smile, only partly directed at Shouyou. He feels like he’s interrupting something, something quiet and private, but he can’t help it - can he? “Morning, Iwa-chan, Tobio,” he says breezily, sweeping the map onto the clean table. “We have grown-up chats to do.”

“I’m bringing Shouyou to the room,” Tobio says. “I… Mind if I don’t come out?”

“Just get some rest,” Iwaizumi tells him before Tooru can say a scathing word at all. He smiles at Tobio, friendly,  _ nice,  _ until Tobio and the little redhead vanish into their bedroom, and Tooru realises just what he did last night. 

He clears his throat. “Hey, Iwa-chan…”

“Yeah?” Iwaizumi looks down at the map, fingers tracing along a blue line. 

“Sorry about last night. I’m a bit too heavy to go sleeping on people,” Tooru says lightly. Laughingly.  _ Sorry I tried doing whatever the fuck I was trying to do. Sorry I made it awkward. _

“Nah, you’re fine. You’re quite light, y’know?” Iwaizumi replies in the same tone.  _ It’s fine. Just forget it. It’ll be fine.  _

At least, Tooru hopes that’s what Iwaizumi is saying with the subtext. He's never been great himself at picking up social cues, but Iwaizumi can't be intending to hold all of last night against him, right?

“Dai-chan noticed something about this map back in the car,” he says instead, running his hands over the edges and smiling at the crackle of dry paper against his fingertips. “It’s something… well, I think it might mean a longer journey. More time before we get Miyu. And… more time before I can get you back to your family, and stuff.” Tooru isn't going to mention his tiny secret dream, which is growing and festering like moonshine in a cave. He  _ isn't.   _

“What is it  _ this  _ time?” Is all Iwaizumi asks. His hands, darker than Tooru’s sun-starved skin, trace along the long blue lines, tap at the small dots where nothing’s been connected yet.

Suga emerges from the surgery room, one hand wrapped in Daichi’s, his head against Daichi’s shoulder. He smiles at Tooru and Iwaizumi. “So, this is the big reveal? What you're  _ actually  _ doing here, right?” 

“Why can’t we just be here because we missed your company?” Tooru asks, still tracing along the lines he drew himself. So is Iwaizumi, and when their fingers collide along a line splitting Africa in half, Tooru feels a jolt of regretful electricity spark through him. Iwaizumi flinches and draws away. “Okay, fine, this is the big reveal. This is what we’re actually doing here, although… we didn’t intend to stop off here, if I’m honest. It was just Shouyou, and Hikaru, and those damned darts.”

“At least it was green,” Suga says. He shifts around so he’s facing the map, right next to Tooru, smelling of antiseptic and vanilla. 

Iwaizumi doesn’t look up. Tooru watches him trace the edges of the British Isles with the tip of his smallest finger, and sighs. “Dai-chan pointed out a problem we have, Iwa-chan.”

“What is this, before we start?” Suga says pointedly. He smooths out a folded corner. “It looks like those things… remember that show about the druids? Something about the sun-”

“Leylines. Lines mapping out points of paranormal significance,” Iwaizumi says, smooth and smug, and it takes Tooru half a heartbeat to realise he’s paraphrasing Tooru’s own explanation back at the flat. “Connected points through similarities.”

“Huh? Oh…” Suga keeps his right hand in Daichi’s, but his left hand starts tracing the lines around the ocean. “Hey, that’s actually clever. But - I mean, I heard you were looking for your sister, right?”

“Miyu,” Tooru fills in. He thinks about the rabbits and winces, only to look up and find Iwaizumi staring at him anxiously. 

Suga hums. “Yeah, Miyu. What does this have to do with anything? And what did Dai find?” 

“The - well, I thought that connecting the lines would pull everything to a point of concentrated paranormal activity,” Tooru rambles quickly, moving his hand to tap on the spot where all the lines converge. “I figured that Miyu was in a crash around the same time as Shouyou, but there were still points of paranormal resonance…” Tooru knows he’s just using waffle words at this points, words to explain the unexplainable, “That means there’s still activity at the crash site. It creates these waves, these lines, and I can connect them to make this spot. But Dai-chan…” Tooru looks up at Daichi, not eager to explain this next part. He feels like a fool. 

Iwaizumi is staring at Tooru’s tapping fingers. “What did Daichi say?” 

Sawamura Daichi really is a gift. He wraps his arm around Suga’s waist, hooking his thumb into a belt loop, and grins at Tooru. “Well… the point where the lines cross is about five or ten square miles, somewhere in that region.”

“Oh.” Iwaizumi says, sounding interested, “How do we narrow that? I’m not searching through ten square miles for an alien spaceship, there is no fucking way I’m doing that.”

“Aha, Iwa-chan, my dear,” Tooru interrupts with a flutter of his hands at Iwaizumi, “You’re so observant. But I’m - uh, I’m not really sure.” 

He’s failed at finding Miyu’s legacy even before he starts. Wouldn’t she be  _ proud?  _ He knows they made that agreement when they were kids, the one they took half-seriously, but he never imagined he wouldn’t get the other half back. 

Damn rabbits. 

Damn Miyu. 

And even if she  _ were  _ alive…

His wrist hurts. He rubs at it with the loop of his index finger and thumb, watching Suga and Daichi and  _ Iwaizumi  _ looking at the damn map the Giant made, 1957- nothing, and he wishes like hell someone would say something.

“You need three more points, from what I can tell,” says Suga eventually. He doesn’t look up, just keeps staring at the map, brow furrowed in deep thought. 

Tooru frowns. “What do you mean?” His wrist is really starting to ache, like someone has needles inside him trying to poke their way out through his skin and through to freedom, but he can hardly go fix it. He risks a quick glance at his pulse point; sure enough, a tiny blue mark is throbbing up and down to the beat of his speeding heart.  _ Fantastic.  _

Suga brushes a wave of hair out of his eyes. “Well, you have three unconnected points, so I’m assuming they were places so strange they didn’t have any similarities. But I think… well, I could be wrong, but if you found three  _ other  _ points to connect them to, the convergence would be narrowed down to a specific spot. Or maybe just a spot of a square mile, or something a lot smaller. Does that - I mean, does that sound possible?”

“Yeah,” Tooru says thoughtfully. It  _ does  _ sound possible - he’s pulled all of the points either from the Giant’s notations or from their own database. 

Freelance 121-129 work, then. 

That sounds a lot more attractive than just going, finding the other half, getting yelled at by Iwaizumi, and possibly murdered by a psychopath in red lipstick and a smirk. 

“But how do you find new points?” Iwaizumi asks, actually into the conversation. Focused on Suga. Not on Tooru.

It’s Daichi that points to the radio mounted over the cabinet. “It’s announced on the 121-129, and then whoever’s knocking will text into Akaashi, and the first one to text, or the closest, or the most well-equipped gang, they’ll get to sort it out.” He grins. “That’s why Tanaka and Ennoshita show up here the most. Tanaka always insists they get the most action-packed locations, and Ennoshita’s the one that drives him back when he gets shot. Or bitten by something exotic with seven legs.” 

Tooru snorts. “So we freelance, but not in a Tanaka way. That’s what I’m getting here.” 

“I heard my name? Is there slander goin’ on?” Tanaka himself roars from outside, presumably where he’s feeding the chickens. Or annoying the goat. 

Daichi snorts with laughter. “Yeah, freelance. Maybe don’t take the Tanaka way.”

“So… what, we just get into the car and listen to the radio?” Iwaizumi asks. Tooru doesn’t want to admit that he feels warmed by how Iwaizumi automatically includes himself. 

“First, clothes. Second, car. Third, food.” says Daichi firmly, and Tooru can’t help it. 

He grins wide and sharp, a cat that’s got the cream, and grabs Iwaizumi’s hand. “Let’s go get the clothes. Koushi’s got an  _ adorable  _ alien crop top-”

“No, Oikawa,” says Iwaizumi sternly, but there’s a spark in his eyes that shows he’s smiling. 

***

Hajime knows he owns a middle-age-mom car. His Ford Focus, a relic from 2004 coloured in muddy red, is the most uncool car ever, although it’s 40 miles to the galleon and he’s proud of the low tax rates he’s kept on it through the years (and the owners.) But he loves her, he really does - back when he was thirteen, learning to drive a bike with his cousin (who was irritatingly superior, just because he’d learnt the previous year), the Focus saved his life. Trips to the convenience store for more popcorn, riding around the fields in the wrecker of a car to shake up his siblings… 

“I don’t see why I need a new car,” he says stubbornly, following the back of Daichi’s cheap Toyota pickup. “I  _ like  _ the Ford.” 

“Trust me, I know, you named yourself after it,” Oikawa groans in the seat beside him, newly dressed in a lurid pink shirt and a different pair of ripped jeans. “But it’s important, really. Hatsu and Hikaru are bound to have recognised your car, or your plates, and the Graveyard is the best place to go to find replacements.”

“I  _ like  _ the Ford,” Hajime repeats. The pocket of his own new pair of jeans (and he remembers sleeping in the same pair for three weeks, once, so this is a weird kind of luxury) burns from the little scribbled number that he keeps carrying around. 

He doesn’t know why. 

He doesn’t want to know. 

“You’ll like the Graveyard,” Oikawa smiles to himself. He plucks at a hole in the knee of his new jeans - which are too short for him, and which he’s decided to accentuate by rolling up the ankles. He’s got a pair of chunky white sports shoes, too, the sort that teenage girls post on their Instagram, but Hajime isn’t going to be the one to point out how Oikawa is basically a thirteen-year-old incarnated into a grown man’s body. 

They drive in silence for a while along bumpy country roads. Hajime swerves the potholes, pulls over for trucks, does the little finger thing when they pass people. (Lift the whole hand off the wheel if you know them, two fingers if they look nice, one finger if they don’t.) 

He enjoys driving in the country. 

He enjoys the country.

“Can’t we just change the plates?” He asks after a while, when the silence gets too oppressive and his mind starts drifting back to last night. “I mean, do we have to get a new car completely?”

“You’ll like the Graveyard,” Oikawa repeats, irritatingly mysterious, but Hajime can’t be bothered to get into the conversation with him. Daichi indicates left, onto a dirt track going up a hill, and Hajime swerves into the puddles just like he used to when he was a kid. Kairu used to scream whenever he did it, just because Hajime would jerk the wheel and water would shoot over the windscreen, and then he and Tetsun would laugh themselves stupid while Kairu turned red with embarrassment. 

There’s a blind summit. Hajime assumes it’s to conceal the ‘Graveyard’ from anyone else, seeing as how private the rest of these oddballs are, but that doesn’t - 

In no way does that - 

That in  _ no way  _ prepares him for the first sight of the Graveyard. 

“Holy fuck,” he says, and Oikawa bursts into helpless giggles beside him. 

At first it looks like a dump, the sort of place kids drive their stolen cars before they torch them out. Sure, for the first few cars, they’re just blackened hulls, but then Hajime sees a genuine black Bentley, 1931 by the look of the arches over the wheels, and - “Holy fuck,” he says again, because that’s the only thing he can think of to say. 

Oikawa laughs again, fondly. “Told you. Pick a car, and we’ll go back to the clinic and pick up the food, and then we’ll go.”

“I -  _ me?  _ Holy fuck,” Hajime is ashamed to say he shrieks, he really is, but he stops the car and leaps out. Forget childhood memories made in a beloved car - that’s a  _ 2CV Diane  _ over there, the car Hajime’s coveted since he was six, and right beside it is a Fiesta with the doors dented in, and he remembers going to somewhere like this with Akane and Tetsun, getting Akane’s first car, a Range Rover of twenty years with mileage somewhere past five hundred thousand. 

“Anything catch your eye, Iwaizumi?” Suga calls, climbing out of the Toyota with a smile. 

Hajime is staring at the Diane, but he hopes he manages to get a nod in there somewhere. He knows it’s not a practical car for what he and Oikawa intend to do, because it’s top speed is… what, sixty miles per hour? “I want -”

“Hey, Iwa-chan! Hey, hey, I found this, it’s  _ perfect-”  _

Hajime turns around, wondering if Oikawa’s found a LandRover, maybe, or some sort of cool, sleek Peugeot, but… 

Well.

It’s orange. 

It’s really orange.

It’s an orange Volkswagen, to be painfully precise, the new ones that the company mocked up to look like the original sixties split screens, and Hajime would love it were it not - 

“It’s orange, Oikawa.”

Oikawa drapes himself over the spare wheel mounted, bizarrely, on the front. “But we could sleep in it! Without hurting our necks, my poor neck, it’s in so much pain-”

“It’s really fucking orange, Oikawa,” Hajime repeats, but this time trying to hold in a splutter of laughter. Oikawa really does look stupid.

Beside him, Suga snorts. “You look ridiculous, Tooru, you know that?”

He does, too. Hair unbrushed, jeans stupidly short, rapidly-muddying shoes on his feet, and fluorescent pink t-shirt clashing horribly with the tango colour of the camper, he grins unabashedly and throws up a peace sign. “But Iwa-chan is folding, look at him, weak to my flirtatious charms.”

“As if I would,” Hajime grunts. He feels the blush creep around the back of his neck.

Daichi smiles a little too knowingly for Hajime’s liking. “Keys are in her. Leave your keys in the Ford for the next person that comes along, that’s the rules, so shift anything you want to keep into the back before you dump her.”

“Who said we were taking the camper?” Hajime protests, but only in token. Oikawa’s started drawing smiley faces with his finger in the mud that splattered on the back of the camper, the tip of his tongue sticking industriously out of his mouth.

Suga smiles. “I’ll - hold on, Dai, your phone’s ringing.” He turns his head to Daichi’s pocket, where something’s vibrating urgently against his leg. “Reckon Noya’s burnt the lunch?”

Hajime grins and shoves his hands into his pockets, beginning to wander over to Oikawa. “She’s nice,” he admits, because Volkswagens are  _ pretty  _ things, okay, just not in tango orange. He likes Volkswagens in general. Just not this one. 

“Such a farmer, Iwa-chan, calling it a  _ she,”  _ Oikawa says in response, but teasingly. He bumps Hajime’s hip with his own. “Budge over, I want to draw a dick.”

“On  _ our  _ car?”

“Okay, fine, I won’t draw a dick. Spoilsport,” Oikawa sticks out his tongue childishly but Hajime sees him scrubbing off a scribbled  _ wash me  _ with his sleeve. 

Idiot. 

The mood is light and happy, and Hajime wonders if they’ll actually make it through the day without being hounded by the three creeps, but then he turns around. 

Fucking fantastic. 

When he turns around, Suga and Daichi are ashen-faced and staring at Daichi’s phone, and in retrospect Hajime should have known they wouldn’t have a whole day’s break from the madness. Hinata’s voice, desperate and piping, squeaks:  _ “They’re here! Hatsu and Hikaru are here and they’re talking to Noya and Tanaka and Asahi and ‘Shita but Tadashi and ‘Kishima are really bad, well, Tadashi is, he’s bleeding again, and they can’t know we’re here, and they want to know where Oikawa and Iwaizumi are, Suga! Daichi! Where - they can’t come back, they can’t come back, don’t come back -  _

“Fuck,” says Hajime thickly, and wishes he could cry. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAY HOW MANY FUCKIN UPDATES CAN I DO BEFORE I RUN OUT   
> many  
> so i hope you liked that total crap of a chapter, next one will have.... a Scene .... that i am very very excited about tbh and imma hype it up too much and its gonna be shit but who gives a fuck bout that  
> leave a review please because i need the Validation  
> also follow me on tumblr clearfullydearfully.tumblr.com  
> and twitter @clearfullydearful  
> i dont have other accounts man i dont have a social life


	7. detachment from the action (cousins)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kay. so theres mention of homophobia in this. 
> 
> also the pacing is all over the place and tbh i feel the fic is falling apart but this is a first draft so im blaming that on the overall shittiness of this and the following chapters, so this is a general apology
> 
> other than that enjoy! theres a plot twist in this  
> its good  
> i think

Hajime grips tightly to the wheel of the Volkswagen, cruising at a steady eighty along the deserted highway. Every so often Oikawa reaches out to turn the radio up, and each time he does both of them flinch. 

Hajime doesn’t tell him to stop. 

_ “Kid, kid, S- kid, H… kid,”  _ says the host, panicked and stressed with none of the former drawl. Hajime hears how desperately he wants to comfort Hinata by his name, but he can’t for the sake of their damned anonymity.  _ “Kid… what’s happening now?”  _

_ “Su- the Doc is t-telling Hatsu to f-fuck off,”  _ Hinata gulps tearfully over the airwaves.  _ “And D-d- fuck, fuck, I’ve forgotten his fucking name, I’ve forgotten his name, the D-doc’s boyfriend, he’s trying to take c-care of T-ts- um-” _

_ “Kid, it’ll be okay,”  _ says Hoot, says ‘Bo’, helpless to know anything. How does  _ he  _ know?

Hajime wants to turn the stupid orange camper around, but he knows feeding Oikawa into their hands isn’t the best idea right now. All the same it takes everything in him not to run back to Hinata and Kageyama and all the others, Suga and Daichi who’ve been nothing but kind, as he hears Hinata crying on the radio and Tsukishima swearing in the background. 

_ “It’s - ow, fuck- it’s just a graze,”  _ he hears Tsukishima saying with gritted teeth. 

Kageyama next speaks.  _ “S-sky got shot by Takaki.” _

“Kei-chan,” Oikawa mumbles. Tsukishima, then, tall Tsukishima with the hard face that melts like butter whenever he looks down at freckled Yamaguchi. Oikawa turns the radio up again and they can both hear Tsukishima swearing in the background now, hear Kageyama and Hinata having a tiny spat, even hear - or maybe it’s Hajime’s imagination - the sound of buff, gruff yelling, faint but present.

_ “No- Hey!”  _

_ “Don't do it-” _

_ “Fuck this, I've had enough-” _

_ “Your heart!” _

_ “Kid, kid, what’s going on? Kid? King?”  _

It’s the freckles. Yamaguchi, that’s his name, that next takes the phone.  _ “N-n… um, Thunder ran out, he’s shouting at T-takaki, but they need to leave now, he’s not got his medication and h-his heart-” _

_ “Fuck,”  _ says the radio. 

Hajime sees his knuckles, white on the wheel. This time it’s him that reaches out and turns up the dial, just as the Volkswagen goes over a pothole and bounces them both into the air.  _ “It’s - hold on,”  _ says Hinata, and the phone clatters to the ground. Hajime hears questions, the sound of a car revving up almost silently, and then he hears someone screeching like a banshee. Someone else starts crying. Maybe it’s still Hinata. 

_ “Kid? Hey, Doc? Anyone?”  _

_ “Hoot,”  _ says a new voice - “Daichi!” Oikawa hisses -  _ “Hoot, thank fuck. I just punched Hikaru in the face, so if you could pull them aside somehow until we get these guys fixed up, that’d be great.”  _ The forced relaxation almost (almost) makes Hajime smile. 

Until he processes what Daichi has said, and then he just sort of stares at the radio display. Hikaru, the tall floppy one with the one red eye and the darting expression? 

_ You did  _ **_what_ ** _?”  _ Hoot yelps, and static crackles across the air for a brief second.  _ “Dai- fuck, what did you do? Why did you do that? They're gonna come back… right. Yep. Pull them off, I have two guys half an hour away and these two better be listening to the radio right now, I swear… Neko! Tom! Get out of that area right now, and Kitkat and String, go make as much noise as you can! Let the Doc do his work!”  _

“Jesus,” says Oikawa, face pale. 

Hajime relaxes into his seat, but suddenly there's pale fingers curling around the hand that holds the gearstick. “It's not over yet, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa’s hazel eyes stare seriously into Hajime’s. “With this lot, it's not over.”

_ “Shit, new callers - okay, Doc on line one, Kitkat on line two, Neko on line three-”  _

Oikawa suddenly dives into the glovebox. “Go a bit faster, please,” he says indistinctly. Hajime obeys, lets the needle on the dashboard creep slowly up to ninety, and they're fucked if they're pulled over now, no tax and no insurance and doing over the limit, but Hajime can't bring himself to care. As his companion emerges with another ancient phone clutched in his hand, Hajime shoves the needle up another five miles. Ninety-five, and he wishes they were on a bike.

_ “Who's - okay, right, line four is the Prof. Ford with you?”  _

_ “ _ He's here,” says Oikawa into the phone. “What's the situation?”

“ _ Sky was shot, but it's just a flesh wound, and Giant is… he's not great, he ducked a punch from Takaki and freaked out, but King has him…”  _ Suga takes a deep and steadying breath. Hajime imagines Daichi with his hand on the doctor's shoulder. “ _... Thunder ran out too, but he's fine, he's fine, he hadn't taken his medication but he's fine…”  _

The well of nicknames and codes spins Hajime all directions. Thunder might be Noya, ‘cause he told Hajime something was wrong with him, he was sick. Had Oikawa told him Sky was Tsukishima?

_ “Doc, you under control?”  _

_ “So long as they don't come back…”  _

Hoot takes control again.  _ “Okay, you need any help? I’m… nobody’s in your area, man, just who you’ve got there, Neko and Tom need to split before the Musketeers find them and Kitkat and String are being the decoys-” _

_ “We’re doing that a little too well, Hoot!”  _ Shrieks a voice Hajime doesn’t recognise, and there’s a scuffle over the radio, and Oikawa - surprisingly - lets out a muffled giggle. There's an edge of panic to his voice, though, a panic that Hajime doesn't like the sound of.

“Who’s that?” Hajime asks. He thinks he sees a motorbike in the distance through his mirror, and wishes again that he had his back. He had to leave it in the garage when he left, and honestly, that was the hardest part of  _ actually  _ leaving. 

“That’s String. String Bean, we call him, ‘cause he’s so fucking tall. Big gangly Russian guy, dating this guy about half his height, they go around in a yellow convertible and mostly commit credit fraud to get money,” Oikawa explains, mouth away from the phone mike. He brings it back to say, “String, what the hell are you doing?”

_ “Don’t put yourself in danger!”  _ Suga yelps. 

The voice, String, keeps shrieking.  _ “We’re being - oh, dodge that puppy, don’t kill the puppy! We’re being chased, but they’re really fast and - hey, the puppy’s chasing the car, don’t kill it! They’re really fast and we have a flat wheel and I don’t know what we can do, Hoot, Hoot, Hoot, I-” _

“Where are you?” Oikawa asks. 

_ “You aren’t coming to get us,”  _ another unfamiliar voice almost growls across the same phone line, cutting off the excitable chatter.  _ “Just keep driving and we’ll keep driving and if the worst comes to the worst, I have an automatic in the glovebox.”  _

_ “Double back to the clinic if it gets bad,”  _ says Daichi over the first phone line. In the background of his call, Hajime hears someone begin to swear incredibly loudly. 

He snatches the phone from Oikawa. “What the fuck is going on back there?” He yells into the phone, shouting partly in fear and and partly in frustration at how  _ helpless  _ he and Oikawa both are. He speeds up and the dial has maxed out on the speedometer - ninety is the limit for this wrecker of a 1970’s throwback - 

_ “Fuck, Tsukishima,”  _ someone says. Detached. Like in a bad horror movie where the director doesn’t know how to convey astonishment, so he told the cast to just sound shocked. Disbelieving. (It’s only much, much later that Hajime realises they’ve started using real names on the air, and he wonders why it doesn’t make more of a difference. Oikawa will explain to him in a low, hoarse voice that the entire operation was founded by kids, thirteen and fourteen and fifteen, and when you’re a kid, code names sound cool.)

(Nothing changes. Hajime gets infinitesimally sadder. Life carries on.)

_ “What’s going on?”  _ Asks another new voice on the third line. What had Bo called him? Neko? 

Oikawa snatches the phone back from Hajime. “We’re turning around. Iwa-chan, turn around, come on, we have to go back-”

_ “No!”  _ Daichi snaps.  _ “Don’t you fucking dare, after Kei got shot, and he’s bleeding everywhere but it’s just blood, he’s not hit anywhere vital, and you’re not sacrificing that much just because you’ve got a goddamn guilt complex.”  _

_ “Guys, guys, who’s shot? Don’t go back - Lev, Lev, where are you? Ken-”  _ Abruptly the radio cuts out, and with a jerk of his head Hajime realises that a large oak tree has momentarily blocked the signal. They pass by the tree and, just like that, they’re plunged back into the terror being broadcast at them live.  _ “Blondie? I - Lev!”  _

_ “We’re going fast,”  _ says the Russian one, String, Lev, and the bounce is gone from his voice.  _ “They’re still following, but I don’t know… if they catch up to us… Takaki seems a bit too trigger-happy-” _

_ “I have the gun, kiddo, I’m going to use it,” _ says the other one. The threatening one.  _ “Don’t worry about us, worry about the Prof and Sky and wherever the fuck the kittens are.”  _

_ “We’re safe,”  _ the third line voice says.  _ “There’s a gross campervan in sight and nobody else, we’re well out of the area, so fucking focus on the clinic for three seconds, please.”  _

A beat of silence.

Hajime thinks there’s something of note in the last sentence, but for the life of him he can’t work out what it is. 

Another beat. 

And then, thank God, Hinata is back on the air.  _ “Tsukishima is fine. I’m f-fine. We’re all fine except Noya, who went into one of his sessions-”  _ Oikawa sucks in a horrible breath  _ “-But Suga says it’s minor and he’s mixing the medication now and I’m fine and he’s fine and T-tobio is fine and we’re all fine. We’re all fine!”  _

_ “Lev. Yaku.”  _ Hoot doesn’t pause after Hinata’s declaration, moving straight on to the next pair in danger.  _ “Well?” _

_ “These motherfuckers are going to eat my automatic if they come any closer,”  _ the voice that Hajime assumes is Yaku snarls. 

Lev, the other one, snatches the phone. Hajime hears the scuffle through tinny speakers.  _ “They’re gaining, but we’re slowing and they’re not closing the gap. I think Hatsu and Hikaru know we’re the decoy, but it’ll be fine, Yaku’s aiming for the front wheel and they’re really fucked if that goes for them now. No other car. We’re not fine, but we will be in about five minutes, if you want to wait-” _

_ “Prof. Ford.”  _ Hoot is starting to calm down, evidently, although he’s still sharp and brittle. 

Oikawa takes a few seconds to breathe before he answers, during which Hajime slows until the needle can move on the speedometer again. Downwards, this time. “We’re actually fine. Nobody in the distance, just two bikes, and Iwa-chan is freaking out but I’m not-”

“Yes, he is,” Hajime says, and is rewarded with a tiny snort from Hoot. Bo. Bokuto? Is that his name? 

_ “Okay, good, good, fuckin’ fantastic… Neko. Tom.”  _

_ “Same here,”  _ says someone that sounds weirdly familiar to Hajime, although he can’t place it. The creeping sensation of leftover homesickness crawls further up his neck.  _ “We’re well out of the area, we’re not actually fucked, all we can see is this stupid fucking camper. Who paints a camper orange? Jesus Christ, it’s burning my eyes-” _

Hajime’s eyes flick rapidly up to the mirror, where the two bikes are almost on their tail. 

He takes the phone. 

“I don’t want to freak you out, whoever the fuck you are, but I think you’re right behind us. This camper you’re behind wouldn’t be totally disgusting orange and have ‘wash me’ written on its back?” 

Oikawa grins loosely, smile slipping sideways, hands still gripping the sides of his seat a little too tightly for comfort. “Iwa-chan, please never let’s do that again. My heart can’t take the strain.”

The radio starts to chatter again, but this time Yaku and Lev have dropped off the line and it’s Kageyama, telling whoever cares to listen that the Doc has mixed the correct medication and Tsukishima is being bandaged up and Hinata coughed up a handful of bloody mucus, cried a bit, and passed out to sleep off the rest of the surgery. They’re all fine. They’re all fine. He keeps repeating it like a mantra, a hopeful chant that gets stuck in Hajime’s head. 

The line beeps twice. Oikawa has hung up. So have the two bikers. 

“Pull in at the next pully-inny-place,” Oikawa instructs, twisting in his seat and trying to wave out the back window. “God, it’s been ages since I talked to these two, and my heart’s going a mile a minute…” he drifts off into steadily-less-panicky rambling under his breath. 

Hajime can't believe that's how it ends. He feels like he's just listened to a podcast, like it's someone else listening to people crying and shouting and having hysterics. Like those people mean nothing to him. “And that's it?”

“That's what?” Oikawa’s hand covers Hajime’s once more. On the radio, Kageyama is telling Hoot that Suga is mixing the medication for Noya, and that apart from Hinata, who's asleep,  and Asahi -  _ Gentle Ace -  _ having a raging panic attack and going outside to calm himself among the chickens, everybody is able to say they're okay. Even Noya, who had a ‘session’, is able to pipe out a weak  _ fine.  _ Oikawa turns down the volume once it's obvious the most of the danger is over, but he doesn't move his hand. “That's what?” 

“We… Oikawa, five minutes ago I thought we were going to be listening to a live broadcasted death or two, and now everyone’s fine?” Hajime realises his hands are shaking, one on the gearstick and one on the wheel, and tries to stop them. 

Oikawa shrugs. “One time there  _ was  _ a live broadcasted death. That was about five years ago, though, and we all had to listen to Bo crying afterwards, and we were all crying too. We didn’t even  _ know  _ the guy, he was in England somewhere, but it fucks you up. That’s how the 121-129 works. One situation at a time.” 

“One situation at a time,” Hajime repeats. 

There’s a junction approaching. The two bikes are almost touching the back of the orange camper; whoever these two characters are, Neko and Tom, they sure as hell don’t like the colour.

Neither does Hajime. He likes them already. They have a common enemy - the stupid fucking Volkswagen. 

“Sorry. About that.” Oikawa says after a while, just as Hajime indicates into the junction and eases his foot off the accelerator. He sounds sadder even than last night. “I wish it hadn’t happened. They’re still on the road, you know, and Yaku and Lev won’t hold them back for long.”

Hajime doesn’t say anything, but he does wonder if that statement was meant to cheer him up and, if so, what the hell Oikawa thought he was doing. 

He parks diagonally across the stretch of road in such a way that nobody else will bother trying to pull in, and sits in his seat until the shakes pass, even when Oikawa throws himself out of the campervan to go greet the bikers. Hajime wonders, absently, just how stress relieving the cigarettes Oikawa smokes are, and also wonders just how bad it would be if he wanted to try one - again, he doesn’t count last night - and then winces, because he remembers his mother telling Akane off that one time he came home smelling of tobacco with lipstick stains on his neck. 

Better lipstick than not, though. 

“Iwa-chan, get out here!” Oikawa calls after five minutes or so, during which Hajime’s shakes lessen considerably. 

He listens for another half-minute to the radio. Now it’s bubbled down completely and Tanaka is on the line talking to Hoot about something called story night. Apparently, ‘Whisper’ is doing a story night tonight, as he feels it’s appropriate, but Hajime doesn’t have a single clue who Whisper is or why his story night is so appropriate. 

“Iwa-chan!”

“Coming!” He yells, and slides out of the car. 

He’s more eager than he’d like to be to get his hands on those bikes, to see the make. Are they Harleys, with that distinctive purring engine, Yamahas with the brute power, Hondas with the sleek design and reliability? Speeding Ducatis, or the scruffier street Suzukis? 

Hajime misses proper driving.

Cars don’t come close. It’s just a box with four wheels and Hajime always feels so detached from the world inside one, he who learned to drive on an ancient tractor without a cab and barely any seat to speak of. On a bike, the road is as much a part of you as the grip under your hands, the feel of the purring engine underneath you, and Hajime last drove one when he was sixteen. 

That’s a long time. 

The two newcomers are standing with their backs to Hajime, talking to Oikawa, who brightens when he sees Hajime finally out of the camper. “Iwa-chan! Hey, you two, this is Iwaizumi Hajime, he’s just some guy that got totally infatuated with my brilliance.”

The taller one freezes. There’s a hood on his leathers that makes it impossible for Hajime to see the outline of his head, but he sees his shoulders stiffen. The smaller one, dressed in comfortable pants and a slightly-too-large longsleeved top, turns around and gives Hajime an awkward little smile. His blonde hair falls over his face, black at the roots where the dye is growing out. “Hello. I’m Kozume Kenma, but please call me Kenma, Hajime-san.” 

_ “Hajime?”  _ Says the taller one. Hoarsely. Familiar. Very, incredibly, hauntingly familiar, and Hajime gets chills up the back of his neck. 

It reminds him of his cousin. Six months older than him but in his year of school, the one he was closest to if he didn’t count Tetsun… 

“Hajime?  _ Iwaizumi  _ Hajime?” 

“That’s his name, Tomcat,” Oikawa says with confusion. 

A tanned hand lifts to pull back the hood, revealing a spiked scruff of unbrushed black hair. A tall frame, taller than Hajime, a source of constant lighthearted teasing between them both. 

“Tetsurou?” Hajime squeaks. 

There, standing in front of him as real as though he never died, is Kuroo Tetsurou himself. Taller and broader and seven years older than when Hajime had seen him last, but unmistakably him. Kuroo Tetsurou. 

“Tetsurou?”

_ “Hajime?”  _

***

Uncle Kyou was his mother’s brother, a sturdy man burnt brown with years of farming, almost identical to Hajime’s father despite having no blood relation. The sun had weathered their features, their skin and their hair, and they worked together on the farm, closer even than most blood brothers might be. 

Uncle Kyou’s three children and the Iwaizumi seven made no distinction between whose father was who's, really, and which house they lived in, seeing as both were identical and separated only by three feet and a picketed fence. Every year on Spring Cleaning Day each child (old enough to walk) was handed a tin of whitewash and told to whitewash every fence on the farm, which Uncle Kyou and their dad owned together, and they spent every day living and playing and eating and sleeping as one unit. Pretty much. 

So Tetsurou was close to Hajime, the closest, even closer than Hajime’s brother Tetsun. He always used to hold his six months and five days over Hajime’s head like a trophy, but they were equals. (Apart from that one bike lesson, where Tetsurou was the most responsible Hajime had ever seen one person be.)  

They grew up in each other’s pockets. Hajime and he and sometimes Tetsun would group off on their own, playing on their PSPs or the one Nintendo that Tetsurou got for his seventh birthday, and when Tetsurou was thirteen Uncle Kyou taught him how to ride the old motorcycle that had been gathering dust in their garage since time out of mind. 

Tetsurou showed off in front of Hajime for three whole months. Hajime, who had the collectible Top Trumps cards with the different types of bike on them, Hajime, who’d memorized the individual statistics of each bike for the inevitable day when he became a bike racer. 

Finally he’d gotten the thumbs-up from his mother, and Tetsurou taught him how to use it in a day. Within a week Uncle Kyou had gotten a second bike for almost no money from the old vet in the village, and gave it to Hajime as a late birthday present. 

And he and Tetsurou fell in love.

(This was when Tetsun had just started to sneak out with furtive glances around him, just around the time when Tetsun had put a lock on his phone that none of them could break, and just around the time Hajime got to know Terushima from the village.)

(Yeah. Around then.)

Hajime was fifteen. Tetsurou would have been sixteen in just three months, but the whole family was collapsing in front of their eyes, and the three of them - Tetsun and Hajime and Tetsurou - each coped with it. 

Y’know, any way they could. 

Tetsun reformed. 

Hajime rebelled. 

Tetsurou went on drives that lasted for hours on a bike, an underage kid who still didn’t fit into his leathers, and Hajime knew he was seeking the speed that would be fast enough to just let him forget, even for an hour or two, all the shit that was happening at home.

Hajime found the bike. And the blood. 

Hajime was already fucked, anyway. 

He and Tetsun had a screaming match, and Terushima was blowing up his phone, and Akane had come home from his new flat in the big city with a cold look in his eyes. 

Looking to postpone the inevitable, Hajime went for a ride, figuring that it must have worked to some extent for Tetsurou, and it would have to work for him. His brain felt too big for his head and his eyes were burning and that’s why he drove past it the first time. 

Not the second time. 

The bike Uncle Kyou pulled out of his garage was an old and scrappy Suzuki, painted in chipped-off red. 

It was strange. Hajime didn’t look anywhere near the blood that he was stepping in, nor did he pay any attention to the jacket trapped under the bike, and he certainly didn’t look at the red-spattered wallet that had fallen on the ground. He knelt and checked the wheels and the engine and the whole of the bike, which was twisted and flattened as though something had driven over it intently. With purpose. Here was a bike that had been annihilated past an inch of his life. 

Inside the wallet was a wad of bills and a debit card. The leather jacket was ripped. A bag had fallen in the ditch; it held a few changes of clothing. 

Kuroo Tetsurou had been running away.

Everyone knew it, in the days that followed, in the bungled-up speech Pastor Evans gave at the funeral, in the shouting matches that continued unceasing, but nobody mentioned it. 

Hajime never washed his boots. Flecks of Tetsurou’s blood peeled off them, but he didn’t want to wash away the last of the only person who might have understood. 

Even Terushima had fucked off. 

And since that day, since discovering the flattened bike, Hajime had never sat on a motorbike again. 

***

His throat feels tight and constricted, even know as they move steadily North. The 121-129 tells them that  _ there’s a cushy job to suit the Prof and Ford on your search, or so the Doc tells me, so head to yellow taupe mauve and ask for the alien guy.  _

Oikawa tells him the code hidden in the message. Hajime notes down the place names, keeps an eye on the roadsigns they pass, and doesn’t look back at the bikes that follow them. 

They stop at a McDonald’s. It’s closed. “They dump the night food around here, sometimes,” Hajime tells the three people that follow him.

“How’d you know that, Iwa-chan?” Oikawa asks minutes later when they’re scooping still-warm french fries into their mouths by the handful. 

Hajime avoids Tetsurou’s eye and shrugs. 

***

Kenma’s always been good at reading people - it’s a skill he’s honed to knifepoint after years of depending on it to know when to duck. He can read everyone, to a certain extent, but it works best on the people he knows, and (apart from his stepfather) the person he can read the best is Tetsurou. 

So he knows when something’s on Tetsurou’s mind. 

And he knows that it’s this new guy that Oikawa has showed up with, Iwaizumi Hajime with the astonished expression and the shifting eyes when he’s asked about anything he knows about and the lust in his eyes when he stares at Kenma’s motorbike. 

Here’s the situation, Kenma figures late that night when they pull in off the road to catch a couple of hours. Iwaizumi, who is listening to the story night with fresh ears and a captivated expression, knows Tetsurou from way back. But he didn’t know where Tetsurou was or what he was doing, which is why he’s so surprised by him showing up now. Oikawa doesn’t know the connection between the two either, judging by the curious, jealous looks he flings between Tetsurou and Iwaizumi - and another thing. Oikawa is falling painfully hard for Iwaizumi, and something is stopping Iwaizumi from admitting that he feels the same. Tetsurou is as shocked as Iwaizumi is, so  _ he  _ didn’t know about Iwaizumi, either. 

There are two sleeping bags in the orange van. 

“You take this one, we’ll pair up,” Oikawa is saying, right before Kenma pulls his own from the sidebags of his bike. Tetsurou does the same. “I - oh. Iwa-chan, there’s a bag for you after all!”

“Thanks, Kenma,” Tetsurou mumbles when Kenma zips their bags together and wriggles deep into one side. “Squish over.”

“Don’t wanna. ‘M cold,” Kenma responds, burrowing into Tetsurou as soon as he possibly can. Tetsurou gives off heat like a radiator, and always has, the perfect match to Kenma’s perpetual chill. “When d’ya think we’ll reach this job?”

“Tomorrow evening, my estimate.” Tetsurou says. His eyes flicker over Kenma’s head towards Iwaizumi, who’s now listening to Akaashi’s calming voice talk about the old favourite with Ukai and Takeda, way back a decade ago. 

Kenma lifts his hand to brush against Tetsurou’s jaw, rubbing his thumb over the bridge of bone, Oikawa in the corner of his eye bent over an old map with fanatical obsessions. “They’re coming too. Are you going to tell me about it?”

“Kenma, I…” Tetsurou sighs. His hands wrap around Kenma’s shoulders, comforting in their embrace, but he’s careful not to dislodge the stroking hand. Kenma loves him, he really does, but he hates when Tetsurou gets all cryptic and inward. He never knew what happened before Tetsurou met him, not really, although Tetsurou knows all about Kenma, and this is only the third time in eight years that Kenma has regretted never asking in more detail. “I don’t - I’ll sort it with Hajime first. I fucked up a long time ago, but I never thought… jesus. It’s long and it’s boring and there’s two cousins and three different boyfriends involved, but I don’t know the end of it. I split before the story finished.”

“Sort it out by morning, please. Tooru looks stressed already. He thinks you two dated.” Kenma places the request softly, and very deliberately doesn’t place a question mark at the end. 

Tetsurou laughs softly. “God, no. We were cousins. I’ll sort it out, just go to sleep, okay?”

***

Okay, so maybe Tooru misread the whole thing back at the clinic. He thinks about it when he wakes up sometime during the night - he thought Iwaizumi was some sort of homophobe, seriously creeped out by Tooru’s advances, which isn’t  _ great,  _ but Tooru will fuck off if he reads the signs. 

But Kuroo? How does Iwaizumi know him? Who reacts to someone by whispering their first name like a starving man who’s just seen a feast for the first time in years? Romantic partners, that’s who. 

And Tooru doesn’t like bringing it up with Kenma, who will just blink at him and shake his head. Tooru isn’t going to ask Iwaizumi, either. 

He hears someone shift in the sleeping bag beside him. Kuroo, probably. Kenma is as silent as the kitten he’s been named after. 

“Hey. Hey, Hajime, are you awake?”

“How could I not be?” Comes the reply from Tooru’s other side, and his heart leaps in his chest at the thrill of accidental spying coupled with the fear that this is going to wreck his (already slim) chances with Iwaizumi from ever happening. 

Kuroo moves again, fabric sliding against skin. “I really am sorry.”

“Fuck, Tetsurou, do you think that makes it okay?  _ Jesus… _ ” Iwaizumi shuffles around, too, his foot kicking against Tooru’s, and it’s all Tooru can do not to move out of the way. He lies still and keeps his breathing deep and even and doesn’t squeak when Iwaizumi ever-so-carefully slides his legs sideways a little so he can stretch out. 

A beat of silence. Iwaizumi: “I found the bike, y’know. Where did you get the blood?”

_ What the fuck.  _

“I… shit, Hajime, I didn’t mean to.” Kuroo laughs uncomfortably. “I really did get hit, so the blood was mine, but I got hit by… well, these two legends, I suppose you’d call them. Oldies. Ukai and Takeda. They were going slow but I convinced them to take me with them and run over the bike a few times. You got why I had to, though, right?”

“You abandoned me and Tetsun.”

“I’m  _ sorry.  _ I didn’t think, and Dad was fucking outraged-”

“You should have heard him when Akane caught me and Terushima.” 

Another silent moment, during which Tooru hardly dares breathe at all. Kuroo sucks in a huge gulp of air. “You mean… fuck, Hajime, what  _ happened?  _ After I-”

“After you died,” Iwaizumi supplies dully. 

Tooru pinches his side to stop himself from gasping. 

“I guess so. Hajime, I’m - It was a mistake-”

“Well,” Iwaizumi says, cool and calm and emotionless, “At your funeral Uncle Kyou started sobbing and told Tetsun and me it was our fault for instilling you with rebellious thoughts, and you’d committed suicide because of it. Tetsun ran out of the church crying his eyes out and broke up with Daki right there and then. Then Akane called Uncle Kyou a bastard for not noticing this sooner, and then Uncle Kyou slapped Dad, and the pastor started crying as well.”

“Fucking hell.” 

“And then Akane got married and moved out, and Kairu said she would go mad if she had to look at me every day, and Terushima called it off because I kept staying over at his house, and I stole Dad’s car in the middle of the night and split off to the city, too.”

“ _ Hajime,  _ I never meant-” 

“And then Akane said he’d give me the spare room above his shop if I didn’t talk much and called back to mum once a week because she was going batshit crazy, and then I won a scholarship to this college to do microbiology for four years, and we had another screaming match and, last I heard, Mum was trying to claim that I’d died in the city and we needed to have a funeral for me, too, right beside where you’re buried.”

Tooru must be bruising himself with how hard he’s nipping at the skin of his leg. 

Kuroo exhales all of a sudden. “Even Tetsun?”

“Last I heard, he was going out with that girl with the carrot hair and the freckles that look like orange paint.”

“Jesus.”

Iwaizumi sighs. “Don’t - Tetsurou - I mean, it was going to happen sooner or later, we couldn’t hope to stay like that forever. I’m not pissed off at you. Well, I am, ‘cause you wrecked bikes for me. Haven’t driven one since I found yours.”

“You wanna take mine out for a spin when we get to this job?”

“I guess. I might be rusty. But Suzukis? They’re cool, ‘Surou, they’re cool.”

Another moment. 

“I  _ am  _ sorry.”

“I know.”

Weird, how that seems to be the most of it, over in a few minutes but making an eternity of an impression on all the people awake to hear it. 

They keep talking, and Tooru keeps listening, but he can’t help mulling over what Iwaizumi said. So he  _ was  _ kicked out. And he’s related to Kuroo somehow? And they… they were both gay, or something, they both had boyfriends, and Kuroo dealt with it by  _ staging his own death and joining the 121-129,  _ and Hajime dealt with it by running away from home. 

Tooru tries to imagine finding Tobio’s car on an early morning drive, with blood all over it. He tries to imagine attending Tobio’s funeral and having Hinata yell at him with tears streaming down his face. It feels  _ horrible.  _

He resolves to hug Iwaizumi as tightly as he can get away with when they wake up in the morning. 

***

The village is a small town that reminds Hajime of the village he used to go to school in, although they only reach it at lunchtime because that morning Oikawa had latched onto him like a particularly tall koala bear and refused to let go for at least fifteen minutes. 

“Bo says it’s a haunting up at that house,” says Tetsurou, parking his bike beside Kenma’s and pulling his helmet off his head. “Hey, Oikawa, what’s up?”

Oikawa has been weird all morning. He shrugs and clings to Hajime’s arm. “Just excited! Excited to be on a job with my favourites! Excitement!”

“You’re nervous? What about, Tooru?” Kenma asks, sliding in beside Tetsurou and slipping his hand into Tetsurou’s. 

Hajime grins to himself. He’s not really accepting that his dead cousin is standing in front of him, holding hands with a boy wearing a blue leather jacket and a measuring look in his eye, but someday he’s sure he’ll get around to understanding it. “So what do we do? Just go up there and go all Ghostbusters, or what?”

Oikawa’s grip tightens on his arm, and he jumps up and down. “I suppose so. Is that what you normally do, Neko-chan?”

“Normally, we get food first, to be perfectly honest,” says Kenma flatly, bumping Tetsurou’s side with their linked hands. “I’m  _ starved.  _ And then we call into the 121-129 to tell them we’re here, and then-”

“And then we Ghostbust,” says Tetsurou, and smiles like he used to when he was asking Hajime to do something illegal with the bikes on the back roads. 

Hajime smiles. “What the hell. Let’s go, yeah?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I REALLY AM SORRY I SWEAR WE WONT DO EVERY SINGLE OF THE THREE SPOTS IN DETAIL and im sorry about the pacing. i just need to get all these things done in a checklist and its sort of falling apart bc of that but im a lazy ass so i wont edit it to be better till im finished. soz
> 
> also what about that then thats hajimes past isnt it dramatic
> 
> eeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhleaveareviewifyoulikediteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhh
> 
> follow me on tumblr clearfullydearfully  
> and on my weird twitter clearfullydear  
> thanKS


	8. cold coffee in the light of the dying sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god this took like a day longer than usual  
> soz  
> very soz  
> i hope you enjoy this one and i rlly hope the story isnt falling apart just yet ':)

Dain Keyes has been driving for hours when he finally pulls over in the parking lot of a closed McDonalds. He sees four kids, quite a bit younger than his thirty years, poking through the bins by the door for the still-hot food.

Poor little bastards. Either a gang or kids on the run, and while the two bikes make him think _gang,_ the horrifically orange Volkswagen makes him think runways.

Either way. He locks his doors against young thieves, reclines his chair, and promptly goes to sleep.

He wakes up to a prostitute banging on his window.

No.

Somehow, despite the low-tied shirt knotted above her belly, despite the skirt that fluffs out above her knee, despite even the high red heels that clack against the ground and the long chocolate hair that tumbles over her shoulders, she doesn't look like the kind of woman that hangs around at roadside McDonalds. She knocks again on the window, dark knuckles rapping smartly, red lips framing an unheard question. Her eyes are alluring, lustrous, shining, the sort of eyes Dain’s ex-girlfriend used to make at him when she wanted him to get to the bedroom, _now, Dain._

He opens the door. “Hi, sweetie-”

Long, strong hands grab Dain’s shoulders and pull him out, pinning him to the side of his car. The girl glimmers at him like the flame of a match glimmering off a well of gasoline.

“I wonder if you can help us out?” She says sweetly, and the match drops.

Dain sees the reflection of the explosion in the single red eye that’s suddenly all he can see. The eye belongs to a long face, the other eye hidden behind a flop of orange hair, the body attached to the hands holding Dain by a pinstripe suit and some skinny bones. “Help out, could you?” The owner of the red eye says. Same voice as the girl. If Dain had been able to look away from the eye he would have seen a large silhouette holding a handgun, but he can't, so he doesn't.  

“H-help you out? How?” He manages to stammer out.

One hand lifts from his shoulder and begins to fiddle with the flop of hair. “You wouldn’t have seen anyone around last night? What were they driving? What did they look like?” The second eye is revealed, a bright shimmering blue, and Dain is enveloped in the fire of the blue and the red.

From a distance he hears himself saying, “There were four of them, two motorbikes and an orange Volkswagen, 1976, I think. One was short with dyed hair, blonde…”

***

Hajime is holding a gun.

Hajime has never held a gun before, and he’s wondering when he should tell Oikawa this, and he’d been _meaning_ to tell Oikawa this but suddenly Oikawa is in _alien mode_ and all his eyes can focus on is the door at the end of the hallway, swinging without a draft.

Hajime is still holding the gun.

He’s played laser tag with his family, yeah, but laser guns and his baby cousin falling over with a fit of the giggles is different to a literal, actual, physical _gun._ It’s heavy. Hajime can feel the bullets rattling around in it, even if that doesn’t make sense - does that make sense? He’s holding a gun, it could be a fucking AK-47 for all he knows-

“Iwa-chan, stay close to me and whatever you do, don’t make loud noises,” Oikawa whispers. Eyes still fixated on the door, totally oblivious to Hajime’s gun and related terrors.

On the opposite side of the corridor, behind Kenma and clutching his own gun with far more ease, Tetsurou rolls his eyes. _The Prof is excitable,_ he mouths. _Doesn’t get out often._

Hajime grins a little stiffly and nods. (He’s still not sure whether or not that really is Tetsurou, when Tetsurou was a gravestone in the churchyard, when Tetsurou was the bloodstains on his boots.) (But it has to be Tetsurou, and Tetsurou it is.) “Oikawa, what _exactly_ are we going to do? Please don’t say aliens or I’ll shoot you with this gun. That I’m holding. In my hand.”

Oikawa elbows him before he replies. _“Whisper,_ Iwa-chan, we’re dealing with unknown paranormal forces, so we have to be _careful-”_

“I reckon it’s a simple possession, this one, but there’s got to be something unique to make it one of your dots, right, Tooru?” Kenma says quietly. He cocks his head, waiting for Oikawa’s reply.

“I _guess_ so,” huffs Oikawa. “But what-”

“Backstory after scary creepy ghostie alien,” Hajime says with a firmer voice than usual. Maybe the gun is empowering. Maybe he’s becoming the strong, independent young man he was always meant to be, but it still feels too stressful to hold it for this long. He wonders if he’d really suffer any consequences by just leaving it here. Ghost alien things don’t come out for men with guns, do they? Hajime trained his old dog to sit, once. Maybe if he approaches the swinging door saying _“sit doggie sit good doggie do you want a treat?”,_ maybe then the ghost alien thing will like him.

No guns.

“Don’t put the gun _down,”_ hisses Tetsurou. _“Hajime,_ what are you doing?”

“Being scared of guns from a distance,” Hajime whispers back.

Oikawa’s hand reaches back. “C’mon, Iwa-chan-”

The door slams shut and all four of them jump into the air, Oikawa letting out a high pitched screech and Hajime grasping the outstretched hand a little quicker than he’d like to admit.

“Possession, simple, simple possession,” Kenma says a little softer. Hajime looks over to those two - Kenma’s hand is reaching back for Tetsurou, and Tetsurou is holding it like it’s okay.

( _You don’t have a problem with Hinata and Kageyama, or Suga and Daichi, right? It’s ‘cause it’s Tetsurou, but that shit is buried with his coffin, and it doesn’t matter.)_

Hajime’s grip tightens on Oikawa’s hand. “Don’t let go,” he mumbles as the door slides open once more, open and far too inviting for the four of them to come on in. The house is dark and cold and made entirely of this one corridor, which Hajime is assuming is more alien weird stuff. The door is wide, wide open.

“I don’t wanna go in,” says someone, that turns out to be him.

“Let’s go,” Kenma says, and pulls Tetsurou on behind him like a cat on a lead.

“Okay, sure, let’s go _right inside the haunted house,_ that’s really smart, I can’t see any reason why that would be-”

Iwa-chan,” says Oikawa gently, pulling Hajime along in much the same fashion as Kenma, _“Be. Quiet.”_

Half an hour ago, just half an hour ago when their orange camper and the two bikes had parked up to get some coffee and food in the shitty roadside cafe, Tetsurou had taken it upon himself to enquire about the ‘haunted house’ in a way that didn’t sound like they were scouting it out to exorcise it or de-alien it or whatever the fuck they were about to do. The waitress, a dumpy little woman in her mid-forties, snapped her notebook on Tetsurou’s head and told them _never to come up there, kids, not for shits and giggles._ It had taken Oikawa to work some weird charisma trick of his to get her to tell them about the old man that had died ten years ago, leaving his house and all his possessions to _himself_ in his will.

(At that point Hajime had got a strange, strange feeling that the next part was going to be horrible.)

The waitress had leaned down into their little circle of heads, grinning with glee at the opportunity to scare some fresh blow-ins. “They say, _they say,_ mind, I’d never go up there myself, that the old fella fell out with his folks when he was a young’un. And a year after he died, the folks came up to pick over the house like vultures. _Vultures._ And I’m telling you kids now, stay away, ‘cause those folks went into the house and they _never came out._ Jack Wallace who lives just down the hill says he still hears the screams. How about that?” She’d fallen back to her feet with a proud smile on her face.

“Sounds terrifying, ma’am,” Oikawa had chirped, practically pulling them back to the cars. “Any chance you could give us directions?”

“Split,” Tetsurou rasped in the here-and-now just before they reached the door. “Me and Kenma will go in-”

“Me and Oikawa,” says Hajime, surprising even himself. “We’re going to go in, you two wait here.”

He’s expecting Tetsurou to argue, but to his surprise his older cousin nods and pulls on Kenma’s hand. “Yell if you need us.”

“I think we’ll be yelling anyway,” mumbles Oikawa. He doesn’t protest further than that, though, gripping the pocketknife in his hand until his knuckles turn white. His other hand squeezes on Hajime’s, his eyes staring down the black hole past the invitingly open door. “Iwa-chan, I really do hate you.”

“Come _on,”_ Hajime says, the lightness in his voice completely opposing the heaviness in his heart and the choking way he seems to be breathing.

He pulls himself and Oikawa through the creaking doorway and into the darkness beyond.

The door slams shut behind him, and Oikawa screams.

***

Kathryn Smyth and her best friend, Kaylee Matthew, have been on this road trip for a month now, a trip around the country to celebrate their youth and their happiness and also the fact that they’ve both been accepted into one of the top three colleges in the country. They sleep either in Kathryn’s new Prius, which is baby pink and which she got for her eighteenth, or in rented motel rooms.

Tonight is a Prius night.

Well, tonight is a club night first, and then it’s Kathryn and Kaylee stumbling out of the club with each other’s lipstick smeared as near to their mouths as they could aim for, their hands clasped together, giggling crazily and waving back at the men that whistle at their legs, stretching for miles in shorts and tight skirts.

Kathryn slaps Kaylee’s ass, whistling as best she can in her current state, and the catcalls double, the girls flourishing under the inebriated attention.

They sober up in the Prius in the hour long drive out of the city. Nobody stops them, even though they’re both over the limit, and Kathryn - who drives - isn’t so much distracted by the alcohol as she is by the small hand playing with her hair, Kaylee teasing her the way she usually would, because she _knows_ Kathryn has a thing for getting her hair pulled.

They pull in at a rest stop, little baby pink Prius beside the trucks and the vans and the lorries, and Kathryn swears something at Kaylee, and they kiss. Messily. Alcohol - and it usually takes a few shots for them to loosen up - alcohol confuses the situation somewhat.

But _God_ is Kaylee good at kissing.

They don’t even remember the man with the red eyes and the woman with the eyes and the tits and the legs when they wake up in the morning.

After all, they had seen an orange van and two bikes, but they’d seen many things.

They just wake up and decide to go for round two. (Or three, or four. Maybe five. Last night is, honestly, a blur.)

***

It’s very, very, very dark.

“Hello?” Hajime calls, and wishes he didn’t sound so much like a child. “H-hello? Is anybody there?”

“Fucking hell, of course there’s somebody here, they closed the door, didn’t they?” Oikawa says with a sort of terrified screech underneath his whispering voice.

Just as Hajime thinks he’s about to become the next episode of _World’s Creepiest Ghost Hunts,_ or whatever, the lights switch on and he almost dies of a heart attack anyway. “Jesus Christ!”

The room is normal. Ish. A bare bulb hanging from a wire spins gently around the room, casting warm light on the cobwebbed surfaces, the sort of old light that hardly anybody uses anymore because the bulbs cost too much. It flickers a few times - Hajime wonders how many times it’s been turned on - before it finally bursts brighter, fully illuminating the haunted house…

Which is an office. A dusty, cobwebbed office, but still an office.

“This isn’t a haunted house,” Oikawa says flatly. Disappointed, maybe, at the lack of theatrics.

Hajime notices that, despite his unimpressed demeanour, Oikawa doesn’t drop his hand.

He’s okay with that.

“Hey, maybe the story that waitress told us was just bullshit and there was no dude and his family, or whatever. Not the first time a local story got out of hand to freak out the new guys,” Hajime says. His eyes trace the room looking for something, anything, that will mark this place out as another dot for Oikawa’s map. They have to put a blue circle and they have to put a line, just because Hajime really, really wants the wandering look to leave Oikawa’s eye.

He also would like it if the three pursuers would fall into a handy pit or something, but that’s an ideal world.

“Hey…” Oikawa drifts away, fingers dropping from Hajime’s as he finds something to look at. “Look around, we might still find something. Who knows who this guy was?”

“Who knows,” Hajime repeats. His hand feels cold and he bunches it into a fist, moving in the opposite direction from Oikawa, coughing a little when his feet kick up clouds of dust in the off-blue carpet.

Oikawa heads towards the computer. It looks ancient, blocky and white and more like a brick than a computer - the guy’s been dead for ten years, right? - and the printer, with curling paper in the printed box. Hajime leaves him to it and heads towards the desk.

This looks far older. The sort of desk his dad had in the office, thick and blocky and made of the sort of dark mahogany that would never, ever, ever rot or break or do anything except gently, quietly, age like fine wine. There’s even that little hole inside the table, the one that people a hundred years ago would fill with ink, and a smaller hole to hold the pen.

Piles of paper are everywhere, written in messy, slanted shorthand mixed with paragraphs of beautiful longhand. Hajime picks one up at random, the pages curling and a little yellow, and reads:

 _May 6th_  
_Have not yet told S. where we are moving. Must remind W. not to pack blueberry jam. S. allergic to the stuff._  
_In other news, I have almost completed my third book, which S. finds hilarious. He claps his hands. They are chubby hands._  
_W. tells me to think before I write or I will never make a meaningful contribution to my eventual autobiography. I have just kissed her hand told her to stop reading over my shoulder. I highly doubt that I will have an autobiography, and if I do, I’m sure readers don’t want to know about S’s allergy to blueberry jam._  
_My third book. It is good. I hope it is good. I write for S. and for the world he will find himself in someday, but all the time I hope that he will never need them. That would be good. Almost as good as my book._  
_W. tells me we are going to the shops now. I assume I have to come too._  
 _S. calls me. I’m going, then._

Hajime sets the page down, more confused than when he picked it up. When he looks over he sees Oikawa in a world of his own pressing away at the dead computer, so he thinks it’s pretty safe to keep reading.

Another random page, then. This one is written in a shakier hand, still in black ink, and slightly less yellow.

 _September 4th_  
_They tell me they will take S. if I do not comply. I dont know wh_   
_To do. I do not remember signing the forms but they say I did and how can I argue with_ _guns_ _with their methods no matter how I try_  
_W. is distant and has been for a while. She put blueberry jam on our breakfast this morning and S. swelled up red and purple and he cried and I_  
_My third book will never see the light of day. They have stopped it. Only S. will ever read it, although that matters nothing to him and he claps when I get to the bit where the woman finds the spaceship. He can talk fluently now, although he still loves the books. How old is he now? I have asked Wil. and she says he is six. He acts younger. He bounces around, and he is often the only thing keeping me from_  
 _They send me letters. I have hidden them. I wish now I had taken the map with me before I_  
 _I know they are searching for me and sometime soon they will find me and they say they will take him and I don’t want them to. I love him. I wish I had never written the book. The children with the rabbits_

Hajime frowns when the rest of the page is covered with a kid’s drawing of two stick figures swinging a smaller stick figure between them. It’s cute, sure, but not what he wants.

Just as he’s reaching for another one, the lightbulb flickers, and Oikawa squeaks. “Iwa-chan! I- I think we should leave, leave soon, there’s nothing useful here, right? Grab whatever and let’s _go.”_

“I- yeah. Sure.” Hajime shrugs, about to leave them, but there’s a manilla document wallet on the ground and he can’t leave it like that. He snatches a handful of pages, shoves them in, swings the backpack off his shoulder, and shoves the whole package in amongst the three cereal bars, spare hoodie, and Hinata’s old phone. “You taking anything?”

Oikawa shakes his head. He grabs Hajime’s hand as soon as they’re close enough. “Nah. This place freaks me out, Iwa-chan, I wanna get out of here.”

“Kay. Me too, c’mon…” Hajime pulls on the doorhandle but it’s still wedged shut and no matter how hard he pulls, he can’t get it to open. “I - I can’t-”

 _“The door won’t open until I allow you, I’m afraid,”_ says a voice from behind them, and Oikawa squeezes Hajime’s hand so hard Hajime feels something pop in his knuckle. Hajime himself feels quite like he’s had enough, now, he’d like to go home, because things are all fun and games until creepy voices in haunted houses tell them they’re trapped forever.

He turns around slowly, expecting guts and brains and things like that.

 _Not_ an old-ish man in a chair, smiling a gummy smile at them both with a hardback book on his knee. His hair is black and fluffy, like Hinata’s is when he wakes up, and he peers at them through horn-rimmed glasses. “I am sorry. I need to talk to someone, and the department people never listen. That was ten years ago, mind, so they’ve moved on by now.”

“What?” Oikawa squeaks. “The department?”

The old man sighs. “Kids with rabbits… they were young. They were very young. There was me, and I had a third of it, and those kids shared the other two thirds split evenly, and then I lost mine. I hope they’re still out there. They can make it work, you know, with just two thirds of it. I don’t know if they know that…”

“Are you making sense of this?” Hajime mutters out of the corner of his mouth to Oikawa.

Oikawa, who looks like he’s seen a ghost. “Kids with rabbits?” He asks. Breathes. “Did you… when did you stop calling them?”

“When I died, of course,” says the man. “They took my baby. They took my wife and then they took my baby.”

Hajime feels a shudder run down his spine. “Your baby?”

“I wrote my books for him. The first two made it to the stores, but I didn’t use my name, I used the name I had back in the day… in the heyday. Twenty, thirty years ago, I was hot stuff. Me, my wife - she wasn’t my wife then, of course, she was young, she’d dyed her hair green, but she was gorgeous… we had a child. I wrote my books for him. He loved them, you know? I think the department have done something horrible to him, but I don’t know what. They wanted him to wear their skirts and their bows when they came to take him away, but he’s always been my baby boy. He…”

“Iwa-chan, I want to leave,” Oikawa says quietly, but so desperately that Hajime tugs again on the door as hard as he ever did.

The old man shakes his head. “I just want you to tell my boy, if you know him… if he’s still alive, if they haven’t killed him… tell him his daddy loves him, and give him the book. They stopped it. The third one. I only got one copy, but he loved it, and he clapped his little hands every time I got to the bit where the woman finds the spaceship…”

“I want to _leave.”_

“Give him the book,” the old man repeats, and holds out the dusty novel he’s clutching. He hands it directly to Hajime. “Tell my son… tell Shouyou… tell him I tried my best. And if those kids with the rabbits are still alive, tell them that they don’t need my third. They can make it with the two they have. The door’s open, boys, you can leave.”

Oikawa chokes out a sob and charges out the door, leaving Hajime staring at an empty chair, holding a book and feeling just as displaced as the whole damn room.

***

Hajime loves motorbikes.

He strokes his hand over the rear fender, moving to the soft leather seat. “Tetsurou, can I go for a ride?”

Tetsurou is asleep, feet sticking out of the orange camper. He and Kenma had, apparently, battled giant spiders while Hajime and Oikawa were talking to Mr Old Ghost Man. They’re both covered in cobwebs, but Kenma is still awake, and he smiles. “He’ll let you take it out. Helmet’s in here. Take Tooru.”

It’s not so much of a command, spoken gently without superiority, and Hajime doesn’t intend on asking Oikawa - not after the man said _tell Shouyou… tell him I tried my best…_ \- there’s too much to think about. But something about his tone of voice makes Hajime snatch both the helmets and the keys from the inside of the van, nod briskly, and go around to search for Oikawa.

He finds him staring into the distance, and drops a cycle helmet on his head. “Put that on. You’re going for a ride, and you’re not going to argue, okay, don’t fucking _mope.”_

“I- what?” Oikawa blinks owlishly.

Hajime points. “Helmet. On. Me. Motorbike. Come on.”

He stomps back around to the bike, shoves the key into the ignition, and feels the engine purring beneath him with something akin to actual excitement. It’s been a fucked up day, okay, and he’s not entirely sure where that house fits on Oikawa’s map, and he’s not sure if he spoke to Hinata’s dead father or not, but he’s on a motorbike again. Nothing - _nothing -_ matters anymore, because it’s been so long since he was here and now he’s back and all he wants to do is drive.

Oikawa drops down behind him. Hajime feels his arms, hesitant at first, touch his waist.

“Have fun,” Kenma says dryly from beside Tetsurou.

“We will,” Hajime says, kicking his boot up from the ground. “Oikawa, for the love of God, _hold on tighter._ It’s a motorcycle, not a fucking razor scooter, okay?”

“Jesus, what’s up with you?” Oikawa murmurs into Hajime’s ear as he moves closer, as Hajime’s bare hand revs the engine, as he feels the burst of power under his control.

He shrugs. “Everything’s so fuckin’ weird, is all.” He thinks Oikawa might reply, but he’s already kicked off the ground and accelerated, dust churning under the back wheel, out of the siding they’ve parked in to sleep and into the small back road, quickly gaining speed, wind in his face, roaring past his ears, and God has he missed this.

Oikawa is a small knot at his back.

Has he ever been on a bike before?

Strange. Hajime has felt so out of control since he met Oikawa, since his gas store exploded, but now that he’s got a bike and now that he’s got up to speed and now, now, now that he’s _here,_ he knows everything will be fine. Everything will be fine as long as he can drive.

“Are you okay?” Oikawa yells up.

(That’s another thing. Riding with someone else means it’s impossible to hold a conversation, ‘cause the wind always steals the words from out of your mouth. Hajime remembers riding with Terushima behind him, Terushima trying to tell him a joke or something but failing almost completely.)

“Why _wouldn’t_ I be?” Hajime shouts back, leaning downward to stop the wind whipping his face just so much.

He feels Oikawa shrug behind him. “Because that was fucking weird!”

“All of this is fucking weird!” Hajime yells, and then turns his head back so that he can’t hear another thing. He wishes there was a second bike, chasing him, or he chasing it, just because it was fun to get the little radios fixed to their jackets, the buttons wrapped around their thumbs, talking to each other and pretending they were James Bond and Alec Whatshisname from the real old 007 films, or Bonnie and Clyde, or bank robbers.

He’s missed bikes. Hajime loves cars, don’t get him wrong, he loves them -

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere!”

“Why are we going?”

“Can’t you feel it?”

\- he really does, but in a car there’s a wall all around him, drawing a clear line between the outside and the inside. Out there is the countryside, out there is the city, out there is the air and the people and the trees and the road. In here is safe and air conditioned with a roof to stop the rain and blinds to stop the sun and things to stop the outside getting in.

On a bike, he’s a part of the scenery, not a viewer. The sun is hot on his skin, the rain is wet on his face, the wind tinges his lips blue. The road is so close to his feet… he could kick down and touch it, and the air and the people and the trees and the road are so much closer.

So much better.

He’s rusty, of course, after so long without a bike, but with every second he’s here Hajime feels it flooding back to him. Mastery under his fingertips.

And Tetsurou’s Suzuki really is nice. They’re street bikes, really, scruffy and not for show as much as speed, but they’re fierce and growling and sleek. Hajime used to have a Suzuki. This one feels good, too, responding to his lightest touch.

He’s fucking missed driving, properly driving.

Behind him, Oikawa’s hands lace together around his middle and he feels something pointed dig into the crook of his shoulder and neck.

“This is better than I thought it would be,” says Oikawa, surprisingly quietly, into his ear.

Hajime drives until the wind steals the tears from his eyes, where the cold salt water drips into the corner of his mouth, until Oikawa points out a roadside coffee shop and suggests - still with his face too close to Hajime’s, still with a voice too quiet - that they buy a cup and sit, for a while, before they go back.

Hajime wipes his eyes with his sleeve and nods.

The magic is gone as soon as he swerves in and parks, kicking out the thin metal prop that’ll keep the bike upright. Hajime relaxes now knowing that it’s _still there,_ that he hasn’t lost it since he stole the car and got the scholarship and got his store blown up.

Oikawa’s cheeks are stung pink when he pulls the helmet off, but his eyes are bright. “I’ve never been on a motorbike before,” he chirps.

“It’s the best feeling in the world,” says Hajime with just a little too much sincerity. He pulls his own helmet off and lands it on the seat, feeling weird without the proper gear on. He doesn’t even have gloves and now there are red raw spots on the inside of his hands.

The moment hangs in the air for half a moment too long.

“Let’s go get coffee,” Oikawa says.

The sun dips a little more into the hills on the horizon.

The roadside coffee stop is one of those that sells coffee only in disposable cups and has nowhere to sit down, expecting only truckers and roadtrippers to visit it. The boy working the register looks sleep-deprived and twitchy, and Hajime recognises the symptoms of an eight-hour shift at a truck stop. When they get their two cups, Hajime tips the kid an extra five dollars he can’t afford to spend, not really, but he feels weird.

Something is electric and it’s about to spark and Hajime doesn’t know what he is, but he can guess.

Just being close to Oikawa, now, has hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Goosebumps up his arms.

They go outside. The Suzuki is cooling in the fading sunlight, the bloody red of the sky staining the white stripes along the mudguards. Oikawa moves first, throwing himself down in the grassy bank, propping his body up with one elbow and taking a swig of his coffee.

He burns his tongue.

“Serves you right,” Hajime says distantly, remembering a few days ago, an Oikawa from long ago sitting on the counter of the gas store and burning his tongue on shitty coffee from a vending machine.

He knows Oikawa better than he knew Terushima, and he’d been dating the guy for a year before it all blew up in his face.

And why did his mind jump to _Yuuji_ of all people to compare Oikawa to? Hajime doesn’t want to know, okay, he really doesn’t. He just sits down beside Oikawa, close enough that he can smell the coffee from Oikawa’s open cup, and stares at the underbelly of the sky, spilled orange and bleeding across the blue. A red sunset. His grandmother always used to say that was a sign of change ahead.

Change ahead.

_Tell Shouyou… tell him I tried my best…_

Hinata with a glint in his eye telling them all about the guy that wrote the books he read when he was a kid. About aliens.

_My third book will never see the light of day…_

“Shouyou doesn’t remember much of his childhood. We all assumed the aliens had fucked with his head somehow, but it didn’t matter much because he had the 121-129 and Tobio and me. He had us. He didn’t need any other family.” Oikawa drains the rest of his coffee, although it must still surely be burning hot, and pulls a piece of grass, stripping it layer by layer.

“So that was the guy that made the map. The guy that wrote Hinata’s books. Hinata’s _father,”_ Hajime reasons. The bits of grass fall in a fold of Oikawa’s jeans.

Oikawa hums. “And he’s dead. Jesus, Iwa-chan, how are we meant to tell Shouyou that we found his dad but, hey, he’s been dead for ten years and also the department might have kidnapped you and also, hey, those guys I worked with for a fucking long time! They kidnapped you and killed your dad and maybe your mother! But it’s fine, it’s fine, because he wrote this book and he gave it to us to give to you and that makes it all better, doesn’t it, it doesn’t matter that there are governmentally-funded murderers chasing the whole fucking lot of us to death, fucking dogs chasing rabbits into rabbitholes, and we can’t do a fucking thing, but here’s a book! A book about a friendly fucking alien! Have fun with those massive scars from the aliens, have fun with those panic attacks, have fun with-”

Hajime’s hand on Oikawa’s shuts him up like a door slamming closed.

“It’s okay,” he says quietly. “He won’t mind.”

Oikawa deflates like a popped balloon. “That was - I mean, I worked for them.”

“You ran away. That counts for a lot.”

“Does it really? Does it say in the history books, when they talk about wars and shit, does it say that this General didn’t really agree with the plan even though he did it anyway, so let’s all give him a medal for the murder because he _didn’t want to!”_

“You didn’t kill anyone,” Hajime says.

Oikawa’s head drops onto Hajime’s shoulder. He pours a handful of shredded grass onto Hajime’s knee. “I did. Indirectly, I did. I let them go out every week or so and I heard, on the 121-129, I heard Bo tell us all who they got.”

“You couldn’t do anything,” says Hajime around the sudden lump in his throat.

“I could damn well have tried harder.” Oikawa’s hair shines in the dying sun. Hajime wants to touch it, figuring that it must be soft and silky and light to his fingers, but that wouldn’t be allowed. He sips on his coffee, which is too bitter and too hot. “I could damn well have tried harder,” Oikawa repeats.

Hajime doesn’t know what to say.

“You know they locked me to the desk for a while?” Is what breaks the silence.

_What._

“What?!”

Oikawa shrugs against Hajime. “After the Hinata Thing, they locked me to the desk. Rope just long enough to get to the bathroom and back, futon on the floor. Didn’t see sunlight for a year and a bit. God, my eyes hurt like a bitch when they let me out. Thought I’d gone blind.”

“Oikawa-” Hajime swallows. “Oikawa, jesus, that’s different to not doing anything. That’s - you _couldn’t_ have done anything, you couldn’t have!”

“I’d like to think so, or I’d never get to sleep at night. It’s all that fear stuff again… you know. What you’re willing to see in others but you can’t see in yourself. Miyu said that, once.”

And Hajime bites something back there, because that _must_ be a partial dig at him, it _must_ be. “What do you mean, then?”

Oikawa is quiet for the longest while. Hajime’s arm hurts with supporting both their weight, and really the next logical step is for him to wrap his arm around Oikawa’s waist, letting them both lie down in the long grass, the softening sunlight warming his face and casting a happier glow across Oikawa’s half-closed eyes.

“You know, I thought it was just me.”

“What?” Hajime isn’t playing along. Not this time. _The smell of smoke… Keep you away from_ **_what,_ ** _Iwa-chan?_

“I thought it was just me. Which is fine, you know.” Oikawa moves so that his hand is over Hajime’s, his other arm resting on his stomach. His shirt rides up over his hips, revealing a strip of pale skin that Hajime isn’t looking at at all.

“Just you _what?”_

“God, you know. Back at the clinic. I really thought… I mean…” Oikawa is warmer than the sun, now, and warmer than Hajime’s coffee. Hajime sets the paper cup down gently and copies Oikawa’s stance so they lie, Oikawa nestled into Hajime, their free hands by their sides, resting beside each other. “I really thought it was just me that you didn’t like.”

“I…”

“I heard you and Kuroo talking last night. I didn’t mean to, but I did.” Oikawa turns his head. His eyes are open and so deep and hazel that Hajime wonders if he could just get lost in them, the warm brown so comforting and _home._

“We - oh. Oh, about that.” Hajime thinks of Terushima, and then he thinks of Uncle Kyou with ugly tears dripping off his chin, the sort of tears that only grown men can cry, weeping about Tetsurou and weeping about Tetsurou’s boyfriend and then blaming Tetsun and Hajime in a way that only a grown man could. “About that.”

Oikawa moves his hand from his stomach to pull at Hajime’s free hand, linking their fingers together. Hajime lets him.

He’s not worried.

He’s terrified, but he’s not worried.

And the sky is a cloudless, cloudless red, the colour of blood when it spills on white sheets.

“You know it’s okay. Like. Koushi and Daichi, or Shouyou and Tobio… they’re happy, and God knows they deserve it, but… even Kuroo and Kenma. You can’t hold everyone else to one standard and then _you_ in this little box, just… not allowed to do anything.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Hajime manages, but he chokes on the words.

Oikawa’s face is close.

He’s not smoking this time. He smells of peaches and coffee and his hazel eyes are swallowing Hajime whole. Warm hand on his. One hand curled in the fabric of his t-shirt at the small of his back. “If it’s not what you’re doing, prove it.”

“Prove it?”

“Yeah.”

“You know what I mean. I… I mean, I don’t…”

Hajime could count his eyelashes. They’re long and curved, and he notices for the first time that Oikawa has pale freckles high on his cheekbones. They’re visible now in the bloodied sunlight. “Prove it.”

Hajime hesitates once, just once, before tilting his head and closing the gap between them. Lips brush, first hesitant, but then Oikawa moves his head and whispers something into Hajime’s half-parted lips before catching them in a kiss, deeper, more meaningful, in the dying sun.

The sun sinks.

It is the end of another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAH
> 
> tumblr is clearfullydearfully  
> twitter is clearfullydear
> 
> ok for reasearch purposes would u lot read a haikyuu idol au. would you. would you. asking for a friend. would you. would
> 
> also please REVIEW I LOVE VALIDATION  
> NEXT UPDATE SOON THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING


	9. there are some diaries and also a dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY IM WRITING CHAPTERS LIKE A BOSS
> 
> THE AMAZING ART WAS DONE BY theodore-is-rice ON TUMBLR AND ALSO ON HERE AND THE FICS ARE BEAUTIFUL AND MADE ME CRY PLS CHECK EM OUT
> 
> SORRY IF THIS ONE'S SHIT I TRIED  
> I TRIED

_ _

 

_ 5th August  _

_ Wil. has just told me she is expecting, Two weeks. I don’t know what to do with this news - I am overjoyed, I am ecstatic, I am overwhelmed, and I danced her around the kitchen to the music from the radio until we both fell over, laughing ourselves silly. I’ve always wanted a child.  _

_ But the department comes knocking again, looking for my research, for the map I’m making. I can’t give it to them. Wil. says she doesn’t mind living like this, half in hiding in some hickory town, but I don’t know if this is a life I want to bring my child into. A horrible world full of secrets and things that go bump in the night, and what world is that for a baby? _

_ A baby.  _

_ There’s a spare room beside my office. Tomorrow I will go out and buy paint and Wil. and I will do it up, put my art degree to some use, finally. The department can hang themselves for all I care. I want to make a world that I can bring a baby up in with a clean conscience, and I don’t care if the department want my money or my research or any of the things I’ve worked so hard to hide from them.  _

_ Wil. tells me she is cooking my favourite dinner.  _

_ I don’t know what it is. I’ve forgotten, holed up in this room, that there are things beyond conspiracies and dust and ancient technology and strange letters from someone that sounds about nine years old.  _

_ It’s a department trick, I’ll bet.  _

_ I won’t fall for it.  _

_ I have a child, a responsibility, and I’m turning my work elsewhere to support whoever I will raise, for better or for worse. Let them come! Let them pillage my work! They will never take my child and my wife, and that’s enough.  _

_ That’s enough.  _

 

Shouyou wakes up from a nightmare with a muffled squeak.

Images whirl through his head - pictures of older hands holding a baby, a pink dress being thrown in the trash, a woman and a man dancing around and around and around a table, laughing and holding on to each other as tears drip down their faces.

“Are you okay?” Tobio asks, sitting up beside him, looking concerned. “Another one?”

Pale, Shouyou nods. “It was weird, I - the same people as always. Same stuff as always.” 

Tobio frowns. “And you’re no wiser.”

“Nope.”

In the days following Shouyou’s rescue, the days where Hanamaki was mourned and Shouyou was celebrated in a macabre sort of party that lasted over a week at the clinic - in those days, Shouyou had admitted that he didn’t remember much of his past before the ship. All he remembered was a book he’d loved, an author he’d liked, and his own name. All he’d remembered  _ clearly,  _ anyway. He remembers little snatches of things, like toast and hot chocolate in the late night, but he didn’t - doesn’t - remember where he came from, or if someone misses him, or why he ended up on an alien spaceship orbiting the Earth.

Usually, it’s nothing. Shouyou has always been happy-go-lucky, and it’s easy to push the whole thing out of his mind, most of the time. 

Even if Suga had said his memory would come back. Even if it hasn’t. 

“What was it particularly? Maybe Suga can help,” Tobio presses, one hand linking through Shouyou’s. “Is it anything to do with what Iwaizumi-san is doing? The Hanamaki-”

“It’s just… the baby and the dress and a book, the book, you know - the one by the Giant. The guy I named myself after.” Shouyou shivers and cuddles into Tobio, relishing the warmth of the other boy beside him. “And then two people dancing. That’s a new one. But I don’t think it’s got anything to do with any of this… it’s just happening.”

“Mm. How’s your chest, then?”

Shouyou rolls his eyes and lifts the collar of his pyjama top (one of Tobio’s old shirts) to peer down at his body and the three long scars running vertically along his chest and upper stomach. They’re redder than usual, and the stitches that Suga used are still visible, but they’re dissolving. Soon they’ll fade a little more, become raised strips of pink, and sure he hates it but it’s better than Hikaru firing a red or a black at him. He escaped relatively unscathed. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“Better be. D’you want to tell Daichi today, or will I?”

“You do it, he listens to you. Thinks you’re more responsible, you fuck.” Shouyou won’t admit he’s falling asleep again, but Tobio’s arms are far more comforting than the clinical white sheets of the two hospital bedrooms in the house. (The ones Shouyou  _ always  _ ends up staying in when he comes.)

Tobio hums sleepily again. “‘S just because whenever we come here it's  _ you  _ that needs seeing to, not me, dumbass.” 

The sound from the open house filters into the room, hanging in the air like a breath of fresh air. Tanaka and Noya are having some sort of competition, Shouyou hears the screeches, but he can’t make out what it is. Probably finding out which one can shove the most grapes in their mouth, or something. Neither of them move, but Shouyou knows that Tobio knows the same thing he does. 

It’s just a matter of telling Daichi and Suga, then. 

Tobio’s going to do it. 

“We’ll go to the Graveyard. But I wanna drive,” Shouyou says after a while of peaceful silence. 

Tobio pokes his side. “I’m driving! You’re an invalid, you idiot.”

“You’re an idiot.” 

It hangs there, unsaid.  _ Who’s going to tell Daichi that they’re leaving?  _ Historically, famously, it’s a joke across the whole 121-129 that Sawamura Daichi lets people leave the clinic as easily as Noya lets go of Asahi in the mornings. He’s especially protective of Shouyou and Tobio, and Noya and Asahi, because the  _ only times  _ those four end up in the clinic, they’ve been hurt. Badly. Daichi always says they try to leave too early, and it’s too much to hope that he’ll let them go free. 

Shouyou closes his eyes and rubs his thumb over the back of Tobio’s hand. 

They’ll tell Daichi in a while. 

_ 23rd June _

_ Our baby is a year old, and he has told us he knows he is a boy. Wil. says this is still odd, but I’ve been in this house for so long I only get my news from the 121-129, and that’s not the most normal of news networks. Still, she comes from the outside world, and she would know, but I told her to let the boy alone. He looks so much happier now he’s taken the kitchen scissors to his long hair, and it sticks up in little puffs like my own hair does.  _

_ Wil. is annoyed with me, I think. She worries for our child. It was fine in this damn house when it was just me, because everyone on the 121-129 knows me and my work. I published that first book with no problem, despite the damned department hanging off my every move.  _

_ Since I married Wil., though, I am reminded… she reminds me that there is a world outside dark conspiracies and jokes on the 121-129. It was fine even then when it was just us. I think she liked the mystery of my work, although I don’t have a clue why.  _

_ But now we have a child.  _

_ I think she wants the life she would have had if she hadn’t met me.  _

_ But I can’t help it. I pick up more and more of the signals every day and my map is almost complete, although I still have only one third of the key and I suspect it would work with only two thirds.  _

_ Added to that, I can’t do the experiments needed. Wil. flat out forbids it, and on this point I dare not push, not when she’s been spending days and days weeping over our child and our life and I regret, I regret, not taking up the post at the editing house. Maybe in another world I would have worked at the department to stop the sound of her damned crying following me around the house wherever I go.  _

_ I need the rest of the key, but I don’t know where it’s landed. I just have to hope that whoever has found it knows what to do with it. Is it too much to hope they are a part of the 121-129?  _

Tobio looks down at Shouyou, who’s reclined the passenger seat of the Ford Focus - Iwaizumi’s Ford Focus, actually - and is sleeping soundly. So he  _ was  _ lying about being as fully healed as he said he was, but Tobio expects that of him at this point. 

Where would they be if Shouyou treated himself the way he’s meant to?

( _ Never met each other, _ says a voice in his head, and Tobio smiles humorlessly.)

_ “So you’re coming to us, then, King?”  _ Another voice says, but this time coming from the radio. 

Tobio shakes his head. Invisible to Bokuto, of course. “No. We’re going to go a loop-round, just to see if we can pick the other two up from that job you told them about, and then we’ll come to you. It’s better that than to just go straight to whatever it is the Prof has written on his little book.” 

_ Little book.  _ Part of the text Akaashi had sent him before he called in - refer to the map as the little book. The loop-round would be code for the town Oikawa and Iwaizumi were going to, as well as Kuroo and Kenma. 

God. This whole situation is turning into a massive get-together. 

_ “Sounds good to me, King. You got Giant with you?”  _

Tobio looks down once more at Shouyou, who’s face is scrunched up with some unidentifiable worry. More nightmares, then. “Got him here, but he’s sleeping. Hikaru’s goddamned dart still leaving.”

_ “Good luck to him, then, man!”  _ There’s a rustle on the radio end. Probably Akaashi pushing something in front of Bokuto’s nose, for all the hope that Bokuto will actually read the right information.  _ “Oh! Okay, so Ku- Tomcat is listening, he says to pop on down to where the wild things are but to the northwest, him and Neko are waiting there at a garbage dump. They’re stuck ‘cause Ford and the Prof took Tomcat’s bike, so you’re free to go slow as you like.” _

Okay. Tobio is just as fast as Oikawa is at the codes, that he admits, but sometimes it takes him far too long to piece what is code and what isn’t out of the fast-paced chatter Bokuto likes to ramble over the air. 

Where the wild things are but to the northwest… okay. He reckons he’s got that one. Garbage dump is roadside junction, and the sun is just about to set. 

Northwest is southeast. Where the wild things are is about an hour away. 

Okay, so it’ll be sunset-ish when Tobio reaches them, but he can deal with that. They can sleep in the cars, right, and did Daichi say Iwaizumi had picked a camper van? Yes, because Kuroo had mentioned it on the radio. Fine, then. 

That’s fine. 

Tobio glances down at Shouyou again, noting the look of uncomfortable fear on the freckled face with a little tinge of worry. Shouyou’s never really recovered his memory of his past, not really, but every couple of months he gets a host of nightmares about it. The worst thing is that whenever he describes the dreams, they’re never  _ horrifying -  _ to Tobio, who grew up seeing ghosts in a cold, cold foster home, they sound like heaven. But he knows there must be something wrong with them, and every time Shouyou has one he wakes up shaking and only calms down when he knows Tobio is close by. 

Goddamn. It’s not the first time Tobio’s thought it, but the whole damn lot of them are fucked. 

_ “And this is the Waterboys with that classic hit, the Whole of the Moon,”  _ says Bokuto on the radio, cheery as ever, while Akaashi shuffles around in the background.  _ “A classic hit.”  _

He plays the track. 

It’s catchy. Tobio drums his fingers on the steering wheel as the electronic synthesisers vibrate the crappy car speakers. Even in a car owned by someone as fanatical as Iwaizumi obviously is, there’s no getting rid of the terrible speaker quality. 

_ “I saw flashes, but you saw the whole of the moon.”  _

Shouyou moans a little bit, flapping his hands, and Tobio unclicks the belt around his sleeping body when he sees the strap cutting into Shouyou’s neck hard enough to leave a long strip of white pressure. 

This song is depressing as fuck. 

So what’s the guy saying? That he travelled around, that he saw all the shit in the world you possibly could see, and he didn’t get half of the insight that some random girl did from her bedroom? What’s he trying to  _ say?  _ It’s annoying, like an itch that won’t go away. It doesn’t make sense. Surely the singer, the guy that travelled everywhere, would see more of the moon than somebody that didn’t move? 

_ It’s a song, Tobio-chan, get over it,  _ says a voice that sounds suspiciously like Oikawa. 

Whatever. Half an hour has passed, so there should be only twenty minutes left - Tobio has been steadily breaking the speed limit the whole journey just so he can stop and sleep sooner. Join Shouyou. Get rid of these damned nightmares.

He turns down the radio and keeps driving into the sinking sun, and only stops when he sees a roadside coffee station and a familiar tuft of light brown hair on the grassy verge. Oikawa and Iwaizumi, taken Kuroo’s bike.

And - 

Wait - 

Holy  _ shit -  _

“Shouyou, you’ll want to be awake for this bit,” he grins, and shakes him awake. 

The smaller boy blinks himself lazily awake, the last of the sleep vanishing from his eyes. “Are we here?” He asks, sounding all of six years old and twice as adorable and  _ no, Tobio didn't just think that,  shut  _ **_up._ ** “Are we?”

“Look at the embankment,” is Tobio’s only reply. Really, this is  _ glorious.  _ As Shouyou’s head turns and he begins to snort with laughter, Tobio notices once again the two abandoned cups of disposable coffee by Iwaizumi’s side, and Oikawa’s hand curled around the nape of Iwaizumi’s neck, and the stillness of the scene hanging next to the sunset like a moment frozen in time. 

Tobio doesn't want to interrupt them.

God knows he - and Shouyou - owe a moment or two to both of them.  

“I called it back at the flat, didn't I!” Shouyou crows. “I told you, I told you, I said give them a week and they'll be at it like rabbits-” 

“Gross, Shou,” Tobio says. 

Shouyou is quiet. And then: “Kinda like magnets, isn't it?” 

“Magnets?” Tobio echoes, eyes still on Iwaizumi’s hands pressed onto Oikawa’s hips. Magnets are not what he would have thought of first, to be completely honest.”

Shouyou nods. He puts his hand above Tobio’s on the gearstick. “Like… if two magnets are under stress, or something, they stay apart and then someone takes the stress away just for a minute and they snap together. And then even if the stress comes back it doesn't do anything, ‘cause the magnets are already snapped. You'd need a crowbar to unsnap them.” 

“I… I guess,” Tobio shrugs.

He and Shouyou… had they been magnets under stress, or whatever? A relationship built on whispered insults when Oikawa and Makki and the other inhabitants of the ship weren't looking, and then later built on whispered conversations, and finally built on Tobio sitting by the bedside of a boy they knew wouldn't make it in the brand-new clinic, Sugawara crying in the room next door because it was his first patient and he  _ didn't know what to do, Daichi…  _ And then hazel eyes opening and smiling like they'd known Tobio all their life. “ _ You'd be Kageyama, then,”  _ Shouyou had said, and then stared at him in astonishment as Tobio burst into messy tears and hugged him far too tightly. 

Under stress.

Probably. 

***

Hajime could safely say that, if he had to pick the three most embarrassing moments of his life, a strong contender for second place at the very least would be the moment when he opened his eyes, hands slipping below the waistband of Oikawa’s jeans, to see Hinata and Kageyama ogling at them from the car park of the coffee stop. In his old car. (Good old Ford. It can always be relied on to be there for the moments that really define Hajime as a person.)

“Jesus Christ!” Hajime yelped.

Oikawa turned his head, too, and fell off Hajime’s lap to roll halfway down the embankment.

And now they're leading the way back to the junction where Kuroo and Kenma wait with the tango VW, and all Hajime can feel is the weight of Hinata’s amused and curious stare on the back of his neck. 

At least he's still on the bike.

To be honest, he's not completely sure the last half an hour of his life actually happened. Sure, he'd known Oikawa was  _ kind of  _ hitting on him in an awkward way, but he never thought he'd end up with burning lips and warmth curled up in his stomach, kissing next to a roadside refuelling stop smelling of bike petrol, smoke, and cheap coffee beans. 

Oikawa’s hands are burning hot around his waist. Hajime wonders if Oikawa can tell that he's blushing, and hopes he can't. 

The sun dips below the horizon one last time,leaving only residual sunlight to light their way back to the junction. The streetlamps next to the coffee stop have flickered on by now; Hajime lifts his thumb and clicks on the front headlights, spilling a moving puddle of warmth ahead of him. In between each white stripe on the road, the cateyes glimmer into action, and the whole world has skipped into night without a word. 

Hajime thinks that cars travel quieter at night. Obviously it can't be true, but there  _ is  _ something muted about the bike engine in these minutes of twilight. 

Oikawa’s hands burn Hajime’s waist. So close and warm and hot, and he doesn't know what to do. 

(He remembers being out with Terushima - funny, how they’d dated for two years and he only called him Yuuji when they were having sex - and Terushima would try and tickle him, hands creeping under Hajime’s shirt, and Hajime would yell about how they were both going to  _ die  _ and  _ crash  _ and Terushima wasn’t even  _ insured  _ and neither was  _ he  _ and they were going to  _ die…)  _

He remembers Terushima, who flickered and danced and enjoyed the danger of dating a guy like Hajime. He enjoyed the secrecy of midnight dates in roadside diners and sneaking Hajime out of the house. 

Oikawa doesn’t flicker intermittently. He  _ glows,  _ shines, burns, but he doesn’t flicker. 

Hajime’s tired. 

He accelerates, and doesn’t stop until they reach the VW, which shines of its own horrifically orange brilliance at the side of the road. 

“Reckon we can stay here for the night?” Tetsurou yells as soon as Hajime gets off the bike. And then: “Hey, isn’t that Akane’s old Ford Focus? The fuck is it doing here? Oh, heya, kiddo.”

“Kuroo! Hi!” Hinata opens the passenger door, falls out, shrieks -  _ “Shouyou, your chest!”  _ \- and runs face-first into Kuroo. “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Kenma! Hi! Hi! Hi!”

“Hello, Shouyou,” Kenma says, muffled inside his sleeping bag. “Good to see you again.”

Oikawa smiles wistfully at Hinata, who’s now leaping up and down with his hands on Tetsurou’s shoulders, yelling about aliens and Oikawa-san and Tobio, Tobio, Tobio with as much excitement as a child at a candy factory. “Shouyou’s the mascot, y’know. Nothing gets him down. Even being fucking  _ impaled  _ on a  _ spaceship  _ didn’t stop him from waking up and, when we came into the bedroom, it was Tobio that was crying his eyes out and Shouyou that was chirping away. Kenma needs the cheer.” 

Hajime wonders if they’re going to mention it. 

The corner of his lip stings from where Oikawa had bitten down on it. 

“Why’re they here, though? I mean… wasn’t Hinata in the clinic?” Hajime asks.

(He tries not to feel too relieved when he feels Oikawa’s hand slipping into his back pocket. Hajime is  _ not  _ desperate, and he will maintain so until the day he dies.) 

Oikawa just chuckles. “Shouyou is desperate to be involved again. So’s Tobio, really. The two of them are like… well, since the Hinata Thing and all that, they’re like the ones to tell. Tag along with. Next to Bo and Akaashi, of course, ‘cause those two know everything there is to know about anything whenever it happens. Even if they don’t report it. We all text in what we know, like a big network to call on if we need it.”

“Ah. Cool, I guess.” Hajime finds it hard to concentrate, because now Tetsurou is looking over at him and doing the eybrow-wiggle thing that he always used to do in church when he wanted to get Hajime in trouble.

And now Kenma is wriggling out of his sleeping bag, saying: “So you two hit it off, huh?” And Hinata is giggling. 

Evilly. 

_ Hinata.  _

_ Tell Shouyou… _

_ My son…  _

And suddenly Hajime doesn’t feel like there’s much to be light about. (How does he say it? “Hello, Hinata, good to see that you’re not dead, oh, by the way, we saw the apparition of your dead father on the way here. He says hi!”) (No, he can’t say that.)

“What’s wrong?” Oikawa asks. Okay, Hajime doesn’t have as good a poker face as he thought. 

Irritated that he has to hop up to his tip-toes to mumble in Oikawa’s ear, nevertheless Hajime does it to murmur: “The man in the house. Hinata’s father, remember… what the fuck do we do about that?”

“I… oh. God. Leave it for now, not when he’s here, not when it’s now,” Oikawa replies with a catch in his voice. 

The papers in Hajime’s bag hang like a weight from his shoulders, even when it’s in the front of the VW and nowhere in sight.  _ 23rd June… There is a world outside dark conspiracies and inside jokes on the 121-129…  _ Just how far does the rabbit hole go? How come all these people are connected?

“At least I know where to connect the circle to on the map,” Oikawa says with what  _ should  _ be humor in his voice. “I’ll draw a big blue arrow right where we found chibi-chan the first time. Can’t get a more solid connection than that.”

Hajime has a lot of things he’d like to say. He says none of them. “Every single one of you are fucked in the head,” is all he vocalises, grumpy out of fear for something he can’t place, before he hops down from tip-toe and stalks off. 

“Trouble in paradise?” Drawls Tetsurou. He’s escaped from Hinata, and sits against the hood of the VW with a can of cola in his hand, the tab against his thumb, unpopped. 

“Fuck you,” says Hajime without heat. 

Tetsurou pops the tab against his thumb and slurps the fizz that bubbles past the opening. “Good to see you too, Hajime. Now, what the fuck was Shou telling me? Did you two actually…” He purses his lips and makes a kissing noise. 

“Gross, ‘Suro.”

“Hah! No denial! I thought you went cold after Terushima-”

“You weren’t there for that bit, so what the hell would you know about it?” Hajime snips, aware that he’s being ridiculous but unable to stop himself. He snatches the can from Tetsurou and takes a drink, relishing the taste despite the warmth. 

Tetsurou frowns. “So what’s actually got you wound up? C’mon, Hajime, if it’s Oikawa being a shithead I can-”

“It’s not Oikawa. I’ll tell you in a minute.” Hajime hands back the can. After he and Oikawa came out of the basement room, they hadn’t told Tetsurou or Kenma what had happened down there, the man and the papers and the disturbing revelation. Hajime’ll have to tell them tonight, before he tells Hinata, because he has a feeling Hinata won’t take it as well as Oikawa seems to think he will. Nobody is that happy all the time. Nobody. 

Tetsurou hums. “You know, you think it’s all fucking amazing for the first day or two,” he says, apparently out of the blue. “Fucking brilliant! Aliens are real and you get to pick a codename and everybody knows everybody and it’s… nobody gives a  _ fuck  _ about what you are or where you come from, ‘cause everybody’s messed up. Kenma… he won’t mind me saying, I know, Kenma ran away from his dad after he broke his arm. Suga and Daichi were on their way to flee the country when they picked me up off the bike. Oikawa… well, you know about him.”

“And? What does that have to do with anything?” Hajime asks. Still snappy. Still annoyed about it. Lips still tingling with the ghost of a kiss that meant too much and lasted too little. 

“And then after the first day or two, you find out how deep the fucked-up-ness goes, and it stops being so fun. It’s just shit, ‘cause everyone’s got a tragic past and everyone’s messed up and nobody really has a home. Not you, not them, not Bo on the 121-129…” 

“I know what you’re saying, ‘Suro-”

“Nah, you don’t. You’re… what, day five?”

“I dunno-”

“Day five. So you’re thinking, you’re thinking,  _ Jesus, this whole thing is depressing, and too many people have hidden secrets and I just want to go home,  _ or something like that?”

“Well, apart from the home bit-”

“Hajime,” Tetsurou says placidly, speaking over Hajime’s muted protests, “What I’m saying is that it’s not gonna get any happier if you stay in a huff the whole fucking time. And sure, this shit is weird, and sure, Oikawa’s not the best person to be picked up by, but he’s not the worst. Not by a long shot. And if what Shou told me is true… don’t fuck around with him. I was there for the aftermath of the Hinata Thing, and Oikawa was… Jesus. Before the department took him back, he mooned around like someone that’d lost the will. Actually, Suga had me and Kenma on suicide watch for a week or two, just in case…”

“Hold on,” Hajime interrupts (finally), “Hold on. Are you giving me the  _ shovel talk?”  _

Tetsurou grins the sleek grin of a tomcat that knows it’s better than you and always will be. “If it helps, I was gonna go over to Oikawa and give him the same. Unless you’d prefer if I just threatened you and ignored him.”

“We’re not even dating,” Hajime mutters, kicking the ground. 

Tetsurou finishes the can and tosses it to the ground. His toe nudges it into the hedge. “Well, if you’re not, it’s only a matter of time. I’ve seen him talking about Hanamaki and he wasn’t even into the guy, and I’ve seen him talking about you before you got out of the van yesterday. Two days ago? Point is, he goes all heart-eyes and starts bubbling away. He bubbles. You make him bubble.”

“Bubble,” Hajime repeats. 

“Bubble,” says Tetsurou cryptically, and then stomps off. “I’m going to threaten Oikawa.”

Hajime waits until he hears the squawks of Oikawa under pressure, and then gets into his sleeping bag and curls up very very small in the corner, Kenma watching quietly from his perch, cat eyes flickering between Hajime and the outside. 

He’s asleep when Oikawa comes inside and curls up right beside him. 

***

“Fuck off,” Tooru says when Hanamaki approaches him with a gunshot wound leaking grey matter out the side of his head and down his left arm. He’s got the damn handcuff on again, the one locked to his desk, so he knows it’s a dream. 

Besides. He fell asleep next to Iwaizumi, and Iwaizumi isn’t here, and Iwaizumi wouldn’t go away without good reason.

Yeah. 

No, he wouldn’t, and shitty dreams need to stop telling him so. 

Makki comes closer and closer, goop oozing out of the side of his head, his eyes bloodshot and red, his hands shoved in his pockets just like they would be if he decided to go for a stroll outside. He’s got the blue button down on, the one he borrowed off Tooru the night before he died. “Heya, Tooru.”

“Fuck  _ off,”  _ Tooru says again, trying to move away. The cuff around his wrist was always a little too tight, he remembers, and it bit into his flesh every time he moved his hand. It does so now, burning and scratching against the faded scars it created the first time ‘round. “M-makki, fuck off.”

“Thought it was time we had a talk, Tooru,” Makki says. He comes closer and Tooru can’t do a thing because of the goddamned handcuffs -  _ every donkey needs a carrot and a stick. Those kids are alive, Tooru-kun, that’s your carrot. This little thing? Ah, kid, you wouldn’t even call it a stick -  _ “Thought it was time we had a talk. About phone numbers and little baby Shouyou and keys and rabbits in places where they shouldn’t be. And loyalty. Always loyalty.”

“You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re dead,” Tooru says quickly. 

Makki lifts a handful of his own insides and pushes them back through the bullet hole into his brain cavity. “Dead? Hey, I may be, but so’s Miyu and that doesn’t stop her from having her effect. Let the dead have their fun in the meantime, Tooru, that’s the sort of philosophical bullshit you like to spout off. How’s the new guy? How’s  _ Iwaizumi Hajime?”  _

“You don’t know him, ‘cause you’re dead.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s talk about  _ that,  _ then,” says dead-Makki, with a leer. It looks far too much like Hikaru, and Tooru flinches, and wishes he didn’t. 

“Talk about what? C’mon, let me sleep-”

“Let’s talk about me being dead, Tooru, just for a minute. Jesus, I’m  _ dead,  _ it’s not like I’m getting much entertainment out of my grave. ‘Course, I don’t have a grave. Takaki tossed me in a ditch. You’d know that, wouldn’t you, ‘cause Hatsu did the thing over my body, that accelerated time thing, and the worms and the biting things and the bugs were crawling in and out of my eye sockets in an hour. So let’s talk about me being dead, and then we can have a nice little chat about your Iwaizumi, and then you can go back to holding hands and talking about the stars like you always do.” Makki takes the stool seat beside Tooru, the one Hatsu would always sit in when she wanted to be the most frightening.

It works. 

Tooru can feel his heart hammering hard in his chest. “You’re dead, Makki, that’s all… all we need to talk about. We don’t even need to talk.” 

“So, about that phone number. About that call you made, right before we were going to reach Hinata. About that time you said it would be simple to distract them while you and Kageyama got to Hinata. About all that - we don’t need to talk about that, Tooru? Hm?” Makki drums his fingers on the table, near Tooru’s cuff, and his nail falls off. The nail bed is raw and red and covered in soil. 

“That - Makki, shut up - you’re  _ dead!”  _

“No thanks to you, huh, Tooru?”

“I wanna stop dreaming. Dreams fucking suck.” Tooru pulls at his wrist once more, wincing as the metal cuts skin and a thin trickle of blood drips wetly off the tip of his finger. “Go away.”

“Nope. You wake up, I lose it, and trust me I’m getting really bored in that ditch. So, Tooru. How’s Iwaizumi shaping up?”

“You don’t-”

“I’m in your head, Oikawa, I’m  _ literally made from things you know.  _ Of course I know about the little girly crush. Of course I know about that shit, which is fucking  _ sappy,  _ Tooru, what are you? In a rom-com? You’ve killed too many people to be a Sandra Bullock.”

“I - you don’t even sound like Makki. My dream is lazy as shit,” says Tooru, tugging as hard as he can, paying no mind to the pain in his wrist. Makki, with his brains and his leer and his dead eyes, is worse than any sting in his hand. 

Makki shrugs. A leaf falls off his shoulder. “Your dream. Your head is saying all this shit, not me. So about the deaths, Tooru, we going to talk about those? Funny, isn’t it, how we all died ‘cause we followed you. Me, Iwaizumi, little baby Shouyou…”

“They’re not dead!”

“Only a matter of time. Have you seen the way Iwaizumi looks at you, like you hung the fucking moon? He’d follow you to the ends of the Earth, Tooru, and he’s probably already decided that when this shit’s over he’ll break you out of the department and you’ll go skipping merrily into the sunset. Great kisser, isn’t he? For someone almost as fucked up as you, he’s sure got past it quick now he thinks he can get into your pants-”

“Jesus Christ,” sighs Tooru, stopping the struggle and slumping back in his seat. His wrist aches. Old cuts reopened. “Makki, can you ever just… stop? Just quit for three seconds, while you’re ahead?”

“Loyalty, Tooru, you just can’t buy it. You have it in spades. Little baby Shouyou and little baby Tobio would  _ die  _ for you. Tobio especially. Remember the kid that saw the ghosts in the cold, cold house without any doors? That kid fucking adores you.”

Tooru refuses to think of wide blue eyes telling him  _ I see ghosts, and I don’t care if you think I’m mad, because everyone does already  _

“So what are you going to do when Iwaizumi dies because of you? When Shouyou and Tobio die? What are you going to do then?”

“I’m going to  _ wake up,”  _ hisses Tooru, and pulls on the cuff so hard he can feel it slicing through his pulse point - 

“Oikawa? It was a dream, Oikawa,” someone is murmuring. 

_ Iwaizumi  _ is murmuring.

Tooru takes three deep breaths, one after the other, the way Tobio used to when somebody would walk through him. The way Miyu used to whenever a rabbit would escape and she’d send him into the woods to search, his third of the key dangling from his neck like a beacon, armed with a stick and a whole plateful of terror. “Sorry. Did I wake everyone up?”

Iwaizumi shakes his head. He’s unwound, now, one arm around Tooru’s shoulders protectively, his body curled around them both in the corner of the VW. “Just me. But I don’t mind. What - I mean, are you okay now?”

“It was just…” Tooru considers telling him the truth, then. 

The whole truth. 

With the rabbits, and the key, and the letters back and forth, and Miyu constantly in and out of that damned shed with the locator trying to find some way of getting the rabbits to co-operate. The whole truth, with Makki and the phone call in the pouring rain and the sound of a gunshot as he and Tobio struggled to lift iron bars off a crumpled, bloodied body. 

He considers.

(Later on he will wish, wish like hell, that he’d just said it there and then.)

(But he doesn’t.)

(Regret will come later, but it will hit like a gunshot.)

“Just a nightmare. Nothing to worry about,” he says instead, smiling a little wanly.

“Hm. Whatever you say, then,” says Iwaizumi. He’s clearly unconvinced, wrapping his arms a little tighter around Tooru and pressing a tiny, hesitant kiss to his forehead. “Go to sleep, then. We’re going… to the radio station, I think, as soon as we wake up.” 

“Okay.”

“Mm.”

Tooru waits until he hears Iwaizumi’s breathing level out, watching his eyes drift close, his lips part in some other dream. He has a smattering of pale freckles across the bridge of his nose, a detail so disarming it completely distracts Tooru for a few minutes. 

He waits until Iwaizumi is asleep.

Then he lifts up his left wrist.

Around the area where once there had just been silvery scars, a mark of the year after the Hinata Thing, there are now red gashes oozing blood as slow and viscous as treacle. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what the fuck is the rabbits?????????????? well, my amigos, soon all will be revealed
> 
> no srsly i swear I do know what the rabbits are, im just not telling you. hah. hahahah. hahaawjdskjnzx 
> 
> okay pls review bc i love the reviews also pls watch the x files because the x files????? the x files is this but with less gay. which is a downside but isnt really because fox mulder makes up for it by being the sweetest ball of fluff ever to grace the fbi 
> 
> okay im done please review ily next update in like 3 days if that's how the schedule is going. trying to get this done before school starts and the updates slow down like honey coming out of the jar
> 
> tumblr: clearfullydearfully  
> twitter: clearfullydear


	10. exceptions, radio silence, and emotional pot noodles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO MIN YOONGI DROPPED HIS MIXTAPE DURING THIS ND I SPENT MOST OF MY TIME CRYING SO THATS WHY ITS BAD. FUCK YOU MIN YOONGI.
> 
> lmao bo is kind of ooc and im sorry abt that it just sort of happened

Bokuto Koutarou was thirteen when he started broadcasting to whoever would listen. He had a laptop, a kind of a cheap boom mic, and boundless enthusiasm to get his voice heard  _ somewhere  _ if nobody at home would listen. 

Oikawa explains this and more while Hajime drives the VW down the freeway and definitely doesn’t stare covetously at the two Suzukis kicking before him with effortless speed. (The VW is a dog to drive. Nice to look at, minus the paint job, but the gears stick like someone shoved a wad of gum in the gearbox. Hajime hates it compared to the freedom of a bike.)

“Bo’s like the rest of us,” says Oikawa, rubbing his wrist, which he’s covered with the too-long sleeves of his Batman sweater. “He’s run away from something, or he’s run into something, or something’s found him and run into him, and we’re all making massive mistakes just by being here. But Bo connects us all. He’s like the spider at the centre of the web, ‘cept he’s a bit more energetic and stuff. He’s the friendliest guy you’ll ever meet. Okay, so maybe not a  _ spider,  _ ‘cause spiders eat flies, but. He’s got like. A web of information, so-” 

“So where is he? Where do they broadcast from?” Hajime asks. He has the feeling Oikawa might continue like that for a while He turns up the volume of the radio, where the host - Hoot, Hajime still doesn’t know his full name, it’s Bokuto, right? - has just announced an  _ old time classic, the Waterboys with the Whole of the Moon!  _

Oikawa shrugs. “I don’t know. They relocate every six months or so, ‘cause the department always… well, the radio was high up - is high up - on the priority list. They don’t like everyone knowing what everyone else is doing.” 

Hajime hums.  _ I saw flashes, but you saw the whole of the moon…  _ Catchy song. Familiar, too. “So… Tetsurou knows where it is?”

“Akaashi texted last night. He’ll text Tobio and Shouyou today using their codes, too. We might be a bit… relaxed when it comes to the nicknames over the radio, but we always keep the directions code. You never know who could be listening, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Oikawa presses his hand briefly against Hajime’s on the gear stick, thumb rubbing against the sensitive patch of skin between his knuckles. “We could sleep in a bed tonight. You know, one with pillows. I mean, I like camping out, but  _ pillows.  _ Imagine it.”

“God, I love pillows,” Hajime grins despite himself. “Before Akane made me move in with him - I assume you listened to that too, you fucker  - I used to sleep in dad’s car, and then Akane gave me the spare room in his new house and I slept on the pillow and I almost cried.” 

“How long did you go before your brother… I mean, how long was it?” Oikawa very carefully isn’t looking at him, Hajime notices. “How long were you living in the car?”

“Not long. A month, maybe? Jesus, did I need a shower by the end of it. Didn’t want to go into the homeless shelters ‘cause I was too damn proud, so I stunk out the place when I finally got into Akane’s house. He might have hated me at that point, but he was still my brother, y’know? He had to make sure I didn’t die in a ditch somewhere. So he gave me the room. But that’s why…” He trails off, unsure if he wants to continue.

“Yeah?” Oikawa links his fingers with Hajime’s on the stick. 

Hajime swallows. “That’s why I don’t mind what happens to me after this. You keep going on about getting me back home, but… well, I was just doing the college degree to get away from the family, and I don’t have a home to go back to, not really. So… I don’t mind. Whatever you’re doing after you get your sister back…”

Oikawa flinches. Hajime wishes this whole damn thing was easier, somehow, although he doesn’t know how he’d fix it. “Sorry,” he says. 

Oikawa frowns deeper. “No, don’t be. It’s me. But if you did stay, if we did… rescue Miyu, I’d… I mean, I’d probably need a travelling partner. If you were willing.” Oikawa smiles at their hands. “If you were willing.”

“If I was willing?”

“Only.”

Hajime doesn’t finish the conversation, but he doesn’t think he needs to. Oikawa understands what he means and he understands what he means and it ought to be enough. 

As the journey goes on, Oikawa rubs his wrist with more frequency, hissing in pain a little every time. Hajime wonders if he should mention the red speckles beginning to leak through the grey cuff of the Batman sweater, and decides not to. Better not rock the boat. 

Neither of them mention the man in the house, either, or Hinata. But both of them know the other is thinking about it, and it stays in the tension in the air, weaving seamlessly into the myriad of other unspoken topics.

***

“Hinata messaged. He and Kageyama are coming too, as well as Kuroo, Kenma, Oikawa and the new guy. Iwaizumi, apparently.” Keiji reads the text off his phone, smiling a little bit at the ridiculous amount of emojis Hinata squeezes into a little update text. 

“Ooh? Oikawa’s new guy. That’ll be interesting, right?” Bokuto is swinging in his chair with his headphones around his neck, his thumb just having clicked the mute button for the microphone. He’s playing the stupid eighties track, again, that one with the synth and the nonsensical lyrics that Bokuto can’t seem to get enough of. The advantages to running your own radio - everyone else might get sick of the same songs, but Bokuto doesn’t have to listen to everyone. 

All the same, Keiji is going to have to intervene soon.  _ You saw the whole of the moon.  _ The tune has been bouncing inside his brain all week. “Should be interesting. Do you think he knows everything yet?”

“What, the Hinata Thing and Hanamaki and the department?” Bokuto flaps his hand, catching Keiji around the wrist and pulling him into his orbit. “Ah, that’s all surface stuff. It’s whenever they start talking about feelings that we gotta watch out, because anyone that can keep up with Oikawa is a force to be reckoned with, and two of them together…”

“They’re on our side,” Keiji says, muffled in Bokuto’s chest before he pushes himself away. 

Bokuto laughs. He runs his fingers through his hair, re-spiking it into its two tufts of white and black. “They’re going to be on nobody’s side but each other, if you give them too much time.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Keiji asks. He taps out a confirmation text to Hinata and begins coding the radio location for Hinata and Kageyama’s set of codes. 

Bokuto shrugs and slips the headphones back around his ears, preparing to turn the mute off the microphone. “I don’t know. Depends on whether or not they like us.” 

***

Hinata and Kageyama have overtaken the VW in their - in  _ Hajime’s -  _ Ford Focus. It’s dustier than it ever was when Hajime owned it, because he may be many things but he takes care of his cars, and that Ford was one of the few things he owned himself. 

“I want a proper car,” Hajime grumbles when first the Suzukis and then the Ford indicate into the left, down a dirt track. He sees long, low factory buildings in the distance. Is the 121-129 based in a factory or something?

Oikawa huffs teasingly. “You mean this isn’t enough for you, Iwa-chan? This beautiful… thing…”

“You try driving it, see how you feel,” Hajime says as he wrenches down into second gear from third, trying to get across the potholes and bumps in a vehicle designed for long, flat roads and week-long journeys taken no faster than, say, forty miles an hour. “Where the hell are we going?”

Beside him, Oikawa pulls out a phone with hands that shake a little. The red ring around his left wrist is completely whole, now, not just little spots of blood, but Hajime still doesn’t want to point it out. 

Oikawa taps a few buttons. “Okay, I think I know where we’re going, although Akaashi just forwarded me Tobio’s text, and he has a different set of codes. So… let’s see, Tobio’s  _ lemonade  _ means four, and...  I swear, I stole his code book, I just can’t remember any of them. Dammit.”

“We’re at a factory, Oikawa, you don’t have to remember,” Hajime stops the VW next to the two Suzukis and glares at his cousin when Tetsurou makes a crude hand signal. 

Kenma slaps him with the sleeve of his leather jacket. 

Good. 

Oikawa shrugs and shoves the phone back into his pocket, looking mildly curious. “Oh? Hey, they’ve moved quite a bit. Last time I was here, few months after they stopped keeping me in the lab, they were halfway across the country. Hatsu must have scared them bad this time.”

“How do Hatsu and Hikaru even  _ know  _ about where you guys are?” Hajime asks. He pulls the keys out, swings them around his index finger a few times, and shoves them into his front pocket, where his fingers brush against a crumpled pink post-it. He doesn’t look at it. 

Shrugging, Oikawa wriggles out of the van and dances around to Hajime’s side, filled with sudden manic energy. “Hikaru has those eyes of his. You know, you’d think Hikaru was the brains, if you didn’t know them. But his eyes are nothing compared to what Hatsu can do with the colour red. Usually, they don’t use Hatsu, ‘cause she’s got… dramatic flair.” 

Oikawa waits until Hajime has gotten out of the car before clamping himself around Hajime’s arm like a particularly tall koala bear, which forces Hajime - albeit reluctantly - to smile and link his left hand with Oikawa’s right. Oikawa’s left wrist, Hajime tries not to notice, is kept firmly tucked into the pocket of his sweater. 

“Hey! C’mon, let’s go. Kageyama has the floor number, we just had the general address,” Tetsurou calls from near the entrance of the factory. 

Hajime looks around.

It looks… unimpressive. The sort of place he might have gone to with Terushima, Tetsurou, Tetsun and their boyfriends, cans of spray paint and boom speakers in his backpack, ready to deface abandoned office rooms and break windows. There’s graffiti all over the outer walls already, and all the windows are broken except the ones in the top floor. Hajime counts with his eyes - four floors. It sprawls wide and flat and grey, an ugly blot of civilisation in the otherwise picturesque countryside, but Hajime can’t actually imagine setting up a radio station here. 

“Come  _ on,  _ lovebirds,” Tetsurou yells again, and Hajime flushes a dark red. 

Hinata is beside the door. Kageyama’s arm is around his shoulders, and it’s painfully obvious that the taller is trying to subtly support the smaller. Kenma fiddles with a hairpin at the massive padlock chaining the doors shut. 

“Shut the fuck up, Kuroo,” Oikawa says, not maliciously. He doesn’t let go of Hajime. 

Hajime glares. 

Tetsurou grins.

“Got it,” Kenma says quietly. With a noise like liquid metal, curiously fluid, the heavy chains slip away from the double doors and the rusty padlock falls to the ground by Kenma’s feet, bouncing once before hiding itself in the overgrown grass. 

“This is obscure, even for Bo,” mumbles Hinata. 

Kageyama nods silently. 

It’s not even dark - it’s high noon - and Hajime feels the back of his neck creeping. Abandoned factories are creepy like nothing else manages to be. “Are we… are we gonna go in?”

Oikawa laughs a little nervously. “Heh. Yeah, we are, Iwa-chan.” He pulls Hajime’s arm with him as he walks, prodding the left hand door open with the toe of his heel and squeezing his eyes shut when the dust floods out. Hajime isn’t so forward-thinking and ends up blinded for the next few minutes of feeling through dark corridors, each as dusty and musty and empty as the last. 

It isn’t until they reach the third floor that Hajime feels the ground beneath him vibrate - the unmistakable shaking of a bass line turned up far too high. 

“They’re on the fourth floor,” Kageyama says with a tiny, relieved smile. “Of course they are. Where else would they be? Shou-”

“Let’s go,” Hinata bounces from foot to foot, grin brittle and false. “Let’s go so I can. I mean. Nothing wrong with me, but if there were, ‘round about now I’d be wanting to sit down. Or lie down. Or sleep. Just saying-”

Kenma cuts him off by nodding gently and starting up the final flight of stairs just as Hajime blinks the last of the dust from his eyes. 

“Oi!” Hinata protests as Kageyama bends and picks him up, cradling him in his arms with uncharacteristic care. 

Try as he might, following Kenma up the stairs, Hajime can’t help but be cheered by the scene. Hinata and Kageyama never change, apparently, always keeping up the bickering that covers the layer of love. It’s cute, in a weird way, and he says so to Oikawa.

“Yeah, it is,” Oikawa replies. (A little wistfully. Hajime is sick of hidden meanings everywhere he looks.) 

Just as he’s about to say that, the door at the top of the stairs opens, revealing a boy that looks like he’s been caught in a windstorm and then dragged through a library backwards. Scraps of paper are stuck to him, in his hair, on his sleeves, sticking out of his pockets, on the soles of his shoes. “Bokuto was wondering when you’d show up, you lot.”

“All hail the motley crew!” Bellows someone from inside the room, and Tetsurou bursts out laughing. 

Hajime will admit that, when he’d been told about a super-secret radio station that talked about aliens and weird paranormal shit, he’d been imagining clinical white hallways and men in black suits and serious earpieces. 

Later, when he’d met Hinata and Kageyama  and then gone to the clinic, and met more people, he’d thought the radio station might be like the one they had on his old college campus. Three or four people hanging around it at a time, all tall and skinny and pale and annoyingly attractive, all with expensive headphones around their necks and a stupidly detailed catalogue memory of every single piece of music ever written ever. 

Even later, when Oikawa was telling him a little bit more as they sped up to meet the mysterious Tomcat and Neko, Hajime had imagined the enigmatic Hoot and Whisper as secret agents, an ear in every phone, sleek and organised and merely hiding behind Hoot’s energetic persona. 

_ Even later,  _ when Tetsurou had been revealed and Kenma had been watching, Hajime had listened to the other host, Whisper, and his story night. With a hoarse, whispering voice, the radio told Hajime the story of two men, Ukai and Takeda, and their journey across the world to find each other after having been separated  by some previous generation of people in the department. Hajime imagined a tall man with a shadowed face reading from mission files, selected from meticulously sorted documents of every single job anyone’s been on, ever. 

When Oikawa described Bokuto earlier that day, Hajime imagined a hard-worn man working the radio with paranoia over his equipment, helped by his assistant, Whisper. Akaashi. 

The 121-129 is nothing like what Hajime imagined. 

“I’m gonna put on a twelve-minute track. Sisters of Mercy, Keiji, my darling?” 

“Not your darling,” deadpans the boy covered in paper, leaving the door open as he drifts back into the room. “I am actually going to kill you, though. Look it up yourself, okay?”

“Akaaaaaasshiiiiiiii-”

“ _ Bokuto.”  _

There comes the sound of feverish tapping for a few seconds from the puddle of light in the corner, which is obstructed from view by a wall of neatly stacked cardboard boxes. Then a pair of speakers, the little pill-shaped ones that Hajime low-key despises, start to shake with a guitar solo. Finally there’s the clatter of someone throwing headphones to the ground, a look of apology on the paper-covered boy (Akaashi, it must be) and a screech that grows in volume until Hajime’s ears feel like they’re about to burst.

“ _ Guuuuuuuyyyyyys!”  _

“Bokuto!” Tetsurou shrieks, flinging himself into the arms of the whirling dervish that emerges from behind the boxes. “Bokuto, I missed you!”

“Kuroo! Kuroo! I missed you!”

“I missed you!”

“I missed you so much!”

“I love you!”

“I missed you!”

“Me too!”

“Hello, Kenma,” says Akaashi, flicking a scrap of paper off his shoulder and smiling. Without changing his expression he aims a kick backwards, expertly separating Tetsurou and Bokuto, and Hajime decides he likes this guy. 

Kenma points at Hinata by way of greeting. “Shouyou needs a place to sit, quick. Pillows?”

“Third box down,” says Akaashi. He nods at Hajime. “You’re Ford. Iwaizumi Hajime. Good luck with Oikawa.”

Well, that’s not cryptic at all. 

Oikawa, thankfully, doesn’t hear that one. He’s digging through boxes to find the third one from the top, and flings three fluffy white pillows and a massive duvet in Kageyama’s general direction. Hajime’s eyes flicker from Oikawa to Akaashi to Kenma and back again, and he wishes he didn’t feel so out of place. All these people know each other, have grown up together, and Hajime is a blow-in that isn’t meant to be here. 

The muffled shouts from Bokuto and Tetsurou suddenly become twice as annoying as they had been. Hajime glares at his cousin, who winks back. 

Ugh.

“So, Keiji, what’s been happening since I last saw you?” Oikawa breezes. He’s covered in dust, nose wrinkling like he needs to sneeze. 

(It’s not cute.)

(Shut the fuck up, Hajime.)

Akaashi shrugs, shedding more paper like a dog shaking off water after a bath. “Nothing much. Hatsu came around at the last place and red up Bo’s arm, but I blew us up before she could actually do anything, and we moved here. Far away. They won’t find us so quick here, I hope, but now you lot are here…”

It takes Hajime a millisecond to realise Akaashi is joking. 

Oikawa laughs uncomfortably. “Sorry. Is he okay?”

“Don’t apologise, the asshole needed the wake-up call.” Akaashi kicks Bokuto again. “Hey! Hoot! Radio station to run, ringing any bells?”

“Akaashi, I love you,” Bokuto sighs. He plants a kiss on Tetsurou’s cheek, then one on Akaashi’s, then one on Oikawa’s as he’s passing back beyond the boxes. “I’ll do a quick update and then hit the playlist on, and then we can properly catch up -  _ Hello,  _ everybody, Hoot here, and I have a party to host so you won’t mind that much if I pass you on to my lovely afternoon chill playlist, here on free Spotify, it’s beautiful…”

The mindless radio chatter fades into the background. Hajime stands stiff and rigid as a doll, and Oikawa pulls at his sleeve. 

“C’mon,” he whispers. “Akaashi’ll have food ‘round here, and once Bo sets up the playlist he’ll handle most of the talking. Relax, Iwa-chan.”

Hajime sighs. “I’m relaxed.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I-”

“ _ Relax,  _ for five seconds,  _ please.  _ I- we don’t- I mean, we’re… I… we don’t see each other a lot, in this thing. Friends. And sometimes people die, and sometimes people quit, and sometimes people just… they just go a little weird, and they stop calling into the 121-129.” Oikawa is leaning against the wall, so Hajime leans back too, feeling secretive and covert in the darkness with hot breath in his ear. “We don’t get the time to relax all that much, even though it doesn’t seem like it, and… I don’t know. They thought I was dead after the Hinata Thing. Relax,  _ please.  _ Come talk.”

Hajime deflates like a popped balloon. “Sorry. I just-”

“Nobody thinks you’re unwelcome except you,” Oikawa interrupts before Hajime can finish the sentence. He tugs on Hajime’s hand with his right. (Left still hidden in his pocket.) “Come on.”

Hajime hears someone chuckle around the corner, in another hidden puddle of light. Bokuto springs from the radio setup to the other group, and when Oikawa pulls Hajime into following, he doesn’t resist. 

***

It doesn’t take a fucking genius to realise that something is going on between Oikawa and the new guy, Iwaizumi, and it doesn’t take a fucking genius to realise that the something is headed straight off a cliff if Oikawa’s bull-headed misunderstandings and Iwaizumi’s gruff demeanor are allowed to carry on as they are at the moment. 

Bokuto Koutarou has always been passed off as an idiot because he’s loud, and because he bounces, but you don’t grow up like he did without learning to read people. 

So he pulls out his phone while Keiji is cracking instant noodles into the pot on the portable burner, and under the one contact he has on speed dial, he types:  _ intervene y/n  _

Keiji waits a minute and a half, like always. He pours the flavour into the noodles, shoves the plastic spoon in and stirs, and then lets the conversation continue over his head as he reads the message. Koutarou is the one dominating the chat, along with Kuroo, keeping half an eye on Keiji - he’s always had the skill for multitasking, especially with things like this. 

The text comes back. Koutarou reads it with one eye while telling a long, unfunny joke that nevertheless has Kuroo crying with laughter and everyone else - except Hinata, who’s asleep - smiling a little because of how ridiculous Kuroo is being. 

_ Depends _

He frowns.  _ On wha  _

Keiji waits. Keiji is far less subtle than Koutarou, no matter how he tries, and he draws attention to himself by being so inactive apart from the texting. 

_ Depends on if they talk tonight  _

_ tonight?????????????/ _

Koutarou claps Oikawa’s shoulder. “Hey, man, what about that one with the mudhole and the metal detector? I almost died the first time you told me that.”

“Aw, man, really?” Oikawa’s eyes flicker from Koutarou’s phone to Keiji in an instant, like he knows what Koutarou is doing, but he can’t. He mustn’t. He just smiles that smile of his, a little too bitter to be real, and launches into the one with the mudhole and the metal detector, sending Kuroo rolling across the floor clutching his stomach. 

_ Tonight. Theyre going to talk then theyre going to talk tonightn or never  _

Koutarou smiles at the hasty misspellings.  _ Tonight or never rlly>?  _

_ Really or else my nanmes not wajkash iqo3333 _

The keyboard mash is a result of Keiji shoving his phone hurriedly into his pocket, the noodles bubbling over the edge of the too-small pan. He swears, muffled, and asks Kenma to pass the plates, while Koutarou remains (apparently) absorbed in the one with the mudhole and the metal detector. 

Funny. Iwaizumi is looking at Oikawa like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard, when in reality it gets a little stale after the third mudhole and the second broken metal detector. 

(Iwaizumi looks at Oikawa like Hinata sometimes looks at Kageyama and Kageyama sometimes looks at Hinata, when they think the other one isn’t watching.)

(Love is cute.)

Keiji smiles across the circle of him, which  _ does  _ divert a noticeable amount of Koutarou’s attention. Not his fault Keiji is too damn diverting, with stark eyes and black hair that goes fluffy when he sleeps on it. “Noodles, Bokuto?”

“Akaashi, my heart, my soul-”

“You could just say yes.” 

The pot noodles, five packets of chicken flavoured ones that Koutarou himself stole from a grocery store, taste slightly rubbery and not chickeny enough to hide the chemical taste of manufactured calories. Koutarou eats the whole plateful anyway, and looking around the circle, notes that everybody here is equally hungry. (Except Hinata, who’s sleeping on Kageyama’s lap. Keiji has saved a packet for later, when the kid will wake up, because there’s nothing as adorable as Hinata when presented with surprise food. Except Keiji, of course, but there’s always an exception for Keiji. Keiji is  _ all  _ exception.) 

_ So q still stands intervene y/n _

“And that’s when the metal detector head fell off again, and Coach took Takeda up to the cliff where the mudholes where and showed him all the broken ones, and Takeda pushed Coach over his head and back into the ocean!” Oikawa finishes. 

_ Kou i think we should leave it up to them to sortlk it outl.,.,.l _

Kuroo cries with laughter. (Koutarou has long worked out that, when Kuroo is in a giggly mood, something drastic has happened to him in the last day or two. Emotionally drastic. He wonders what it is.) 

_ But hhwaht if tehye dont  _

Oikawa looks from Kenma to Koutarou, seeking more approval. “Huh? Huh?”

“Fucking hilarious, man,” says Koutarou with a toothy grin. He slaps Oikawa on the shoulder, winking at Iwaizumi when Oikawa ducks out of the way to cough. Iwaizumi turns red. Kenma grins. (Kenma, the only other one Koutarou has managed to find that can read as well as he can, if not better. He privately thinks that if he and Kenma compared pasts, they wouldn’t find a lot of difference.) 

(That’s sad.)

Oikawa wipes tears from the corners of his eyes and shoves a handful of noodles into his mouth. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it, Iwa-chan, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s great,” Iwaizumi replies. The grin is small, but it’s there. 

Keiji texts back with a minute and a half of precision.  _ They will look at o face and i face they wilkk _

_ KEIJHI _

_ Kou who out of u s is the magic mind reader  _

_ KEINIHI MMJ(JI _

_ Kou _

With a satisfied sigh and a momentary stop to the laughter, Kuroo starts in on his own story about Ukai and Takeda, this time with special cameo from Nekomata himself. (Good old Nekomata. He’d been great before he died.) 

_ Keiji  _

_ Quit it im not as good a this as u are kenma knows  _

_ KENMA KNOWS EVERYTHING  _

Koutarou hasn’t been looking down at his phone, he’s been texting under the table with one thumb while interjecting humorously to Kuroo’s story, but when he looks at Kenma, Kenma is staring at him knowingly. (Yep. Backstories definitely connect there.) “Heya, Kuroo, didn’t old Nekomata tell you-”

“Oh,  _ fuck,  _ he told me to shove it-”

Kenma nods, once. 

Koutarou winks. 

_ Kenma knows everyhting bt the other s mght realise and we are not fuckkgn up oiikawa s love life  _

Even Keiji’s  _ misspellings  _ are exceptional. Exceptionally adorable. Koutarou grins broadly and says, “And then when  _ you  _ said that, Ukai said-”

“He said-”

“Stick it up your own, old man!”

“And then Nekomata slapped him!”

“I loved Nekomata,” Kageyama says quietly, with one of his little smiles that means he’s actually having fun. He strokes his hand down Hinata’s cheek. 

“Nekomata was fucking hilarious,” Oikawa comments, wiping his eyes again. He sets his plate down in the pile next to the now-cooled burner that Koutarou and Keiji use to cook, and launches straight back into Kuroo’s narrative, which has become more of a group-story by now. Koutarou makes little humming noises and hooting laughs, but lets his eye drift down to Iwaizumi, who looks closed-in, darker, smaller than before. 

_ KEIJIN interbenne yn  _

_ KEIJIENM i swear look at iwaoizumin looka t his face he is fuckkked  _

A minute and a half. 

_ I think intervene a little _

_ KEIEEIJEJIIIIIIIIIIIII _

“Nekomata told  _ Takeda  _ to take it to Brazil, not Ukai,” Kenma says. His glimmering gaze shifts fluidly from Kuroo to Koutarou to Keiji, and he nods microscopically at Koutarou. 

Message received. 

_ Fine i have a plan lets go fix the playlist and itll tell you  _

Koutarou bounces to his feet abruptly, dancing from left to right and tapping Kuroo on the head to the fast, staccato rhythm of the song currently playing on the 121-129’s list. The playlist which, in Koutarou’s fantasy world, is right about to run out. “Hey, Akaaaaasshiiiiii,” he whines. “Come help me fix the radio. Imagine if the 121-129 ran out of songs! Imagine if there wasn’t any noise on the radio!”

“A travesty,” drawls Keiji, getting up at a slower pace. “Pass me the plates, Kageyama, I’ll get them washed. Hold  _ up,  _ Bokuto, Christ Almighty.”

Koutarou hops over to the radio set-up, hidden behind their unpacked moving boxes. He and Keiji almost never have time to unpack before they’re forced to move again, and he really doesn’t want to get his hopes up about staying semi-permanent only to have the department come and squash them all over again. 

“I think we should let it play out the way it will,” Keiji says in undertones. “Kou-”

“But they  _ like  _ each other,” mumbles Koutarou, fiddling around to switch Spotify playlists. “Can we intervene just a tiny bit? A smidge, Keiji, go on.” 

Keiji grins at last and it doesn’t make Koutarou feel uneasy. (Exceptions everywhere he looks.) (Keiji is such an exception that it takes his breath away.) “Fine, Kou. I have an idea. We get some pillows…”

***

Hajime isn’t concerned when bouncy Bokuto with the roving eyes and the hooting laugh decides to take a handful of pillows out of their little puddle of domesticity, taking them out of the room and clattering down the stairs. Neither, apparently, is anyone else, and he’s taking his social cues almost exclusively from Oikawa at this point. 

His fingertips brush Oikawa’s in an awkward half-hold, like neither of them are willing to make the next step, or neither of them have the guts. 

Akaashi, the quiet one with the fleeting smile, is telling a story that makes Hajime realise he’s the voice - Whisper - that did the story night back in the VW. Hajime enjoyed it. He enjoys it now, even as he realises the tale would hold more weight if he knew the backstory surrounding the two main characters, guys called Ukai and Takeda that have been mentioned before.  _ Part of the old guard,  _ Oikawa had said. 

Kenma, wrapped like a tiny burrito in a duvet, keeps his eyes flickering from Hajime to Oikawa and back again as he concludes the story. 

Hajime decides that Tetsurou has a really weird habit of dating guys that are analytical and quiet, and also decides that that’s a weird type, and then decides that he doesn’t care.

He’s never felt more lonely around groups of people. (Except the time after the funeral but before he ran away, which he doesn’t think about ever. Ever.) 

Bokuto springs back with a whirlwind of energy that even has Hinata opening his bleary eyes. “I counted. We don’t have enough sleeping bags for everyone,” he announces, staring at Hajime for some odd reason.

Well, Hajime will do anything to get out of this circle of in-jokes he is out of. “We have some in the van. I’ll go get them,” he says, standing and stretching with badly-concealed relief. 

Oikawa hops up too. “I’ll come.”

Hajime can’t very well tell him to sit the fuck down and share stories with the rest of them, although he does glower at the opposite wall as though it understands his feelings. “Fine, then. C’mon.”

Bokuto accompanies them around the maze of boxes and past the pools of light, talking very fast about the clinic, maybe, and grinning like a demented type of particularly energetic owl. He practically shoves them both out the door and closes it behind them, saying, bizarrely, “Have fun out there!”

“Let’s go get the sleeping bags, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa says with a skip to his voice that sounds too shrill and too false to be real. 

Great. Hajime’s being a downer so he’s been kicked out, and so has Oikawa because… Oikawa’s an idiot and follows Hajime where he shouldn’t. Logic. “Coming, dumbass,” he says instead of any of that, and goes after Oikawa down the stairs.

( _ “But you have five boxes… ‘f sleeping bags,” yawns Hinata.  _

_ Koutarou smiles. “We have boxes full of ‘em, but those two need to have a talk, and we’re intervening.” _

_ Keiji rolls his eyes, and because he’s an exception it doesn’t make Koutarou feel undermined or mocked. It makes him feel like there’s someone on his side, and he beams brighter.)  _

When they reach the top of the stairs again, after ten minutes of murderously awkward silence, Oikawa drops the sleeping bags and rattles the doorhandles. “Hey! Bo! Door’s stuck!”

“Door’s stuck,” mutters Hajime darkly. 

“Oh! Shit, sorry, sometimes it does that!” Someone on the other side kicks the door very halfheartedly, and rattles the doorknob a tiny bit. “Guess you’ll have to use those sleeping bags out there for the night, and I’ll see if it opens in the morning! Lucky for you guys I put pillows somewhere… I forget where… just in case this happened!”

“Fuck you, Bokuto,” says Oikawa without heat. He turns to Hajime. “Um.”

“Fucking brilliant,” snarls Hajime, saying it even more because he knows he’s being a complete asshole about the whole situation. He picks up a sleeping bag and walks down the stairs again. “Let’s go find these goddamned pillows, then.” 

Silence for a flight of stairs until Hajime reaches the dark, damp third floor, Oikawa on his heels. 

“I’m sorry. I should have told you-”

And that makes Hajime feel even worse. “Oikawa, would you just fucking accept that not everything is your fault? Sometimes  _ other  _ people are dickheads, and you have to understand that, okay?”

But none of them-”

“ _ Me,  _ I’m talking about. I’m talking about me!” Hajime snaps as he drops the sleeping bag in a corner, between two filing cabinets and the remnants of a rotted desk. 

Oikawa follows suit, and as soon as his hands are free they’re grabbing Hajime’s forearms, bitten fingernails failing to dig into his skin. “I  _ know  _ you’re talking about you. Remember what I said? We don’t know if we’re going to see each other again. See Noya? Nishinoya, jumpy guy, got fucked up by a ghoul or something when he was a kid. He has this problem, with his heart or something, and it means that any time we see him could be the last time.” 

Hajime tries pushing Oikawa away. “Fuck, I  _ know  _ I’m being an asshole, you don’t have to rub it in-” 

“And Bokuto and Akaashi are two people Hatsu and Hikaru would  _ kill  _ to wipe out,” continues Oikawa. “And I know it’s been… what, a week, since I blew up your gas station, and I know all this shit is freaky as fuck, and I know-”

“You  _ don’t,”  _ Hajime tries shoving him off again, but Oikawa, for all the fragility in his voice that night at the clinic, is still taller than him and still as strong as him. “Oikawa, I swear to God-”

“If we don’t talk about each other, nobody will, and if we don’t remember, nobody will,” Oikawa snaps. “It’s important.”

“So’s loads of things, but we don’t sit around pot noodle shrines talking about fucking… I don’t know, fucking global warming-”

“Don’t be an idiot!”

“Don’t be stupid!”

“I wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t!”

“Fucking  _ listen  _ to yourself-”

They stare at one another, Oikawa holding on to Hajime like Hajime will float off if he lets go, breathing heavily. “Listen to myself? Listen to myself? For  _ eleven years  _ all I’ve fucking done is listen to myself and I ignored her and I ignored those letters to listen to myself and then there were no letters and there was no her and I had nobody to fucking listen to except myself, so don’t talk about things you have no fucking clue about!” 

“I- you? You are going to talk to me about that?  _ Fuck you!”  _ Hajime shoves Oikawa backwards again, snatching Oikawa’s arms to try and get him to let go. “Tetsurou died! Tetsurou died and nobody talked to me until I stole a car and fucked off on my own, and then Akane made me move in but he didn’t talk to me either, of-fucking-course he didn’t, so don’t  _ you  _ talk to me about things you have no fucking clue about!”

“Don’t be so-”

“So what, huh? Is it weird, maybe, really weird, that I’m a tiny little bit freaked out about this? Is that weird? Should I not be?” Hajime has been backing up now, step by tiny step, until he feels the cold metal of the filing cabinet against his back. 

Oikawa deflates. “That’s not weird, you fucking idiot, but just -  _ jesus.”  _

“What’s wrong with  _ you,  _ then? Why are you-”

“Mostly because of you,” says Oikawa. His grip loosens a little, all the fire gone from his body, but still towering over Hajime. “I don’t mean to be an asshole-”

“Because you’re  _ not.  _ I am, okay?” 

“But I-”

“Oikawa, listen-”

“Iwa-chan-”

_ “Tooru.”  _

Oikawa stops, blinks, and his mouth drops open. “Huh?”

“Don’t make it weird, dumbass.”

“But, I-”

“I said  _ don’t make it weird. _ ”

Oikawa takes a step forward, effectively pinning Hajime against a rusting filing cabinet, but not threateningly. “I don’t  _ make things weird.”  _

“You  _ are  _ a weird,” Hajime mumbles. Doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t particularly care. 

Oikawa grins, with just a hint of sadness. “So is it weird if I kiss you again?” 

“Couldn’t be any weirder, I guess,” Hajime tries to say, but he only gets to the  _ any weirder  _ part before Oikawa bends his head and presses his lips softly against Hajime’s. An apology kiss. He’s never had one of those before, but it’s soft, and slow, and it’s almost as though they weren’t screaming at each other just five minutes before. 

_ (“Told you so,” says Koutarou when nobody comes to knock on the door. “They’re probably having office sex or something gross.” _

_ “Ew, no,” says Hinata, wrinkling his nose, and Keiji laughs.  _

_ Exceptionally.) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yyaaaaaaaaaaaaaayy nothing like alien memes fighting in an abandoned factory amirite 
> 
> so pls tell me if the quality of the words   
> writing   
> has gone down cuz i cant notice it myself tbh and IM RLLY WORRIED IT WILL SO DONT WORRY ABOUT BEING POLITE OR WHATEVER JUST TELL MEEEEEE
> 
> okay   
> yay  
> so thats bokuto and akaashi now whos ready for alien angst and some movement of the plot? is it you? probably not


	11. are you an unlovable soul?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SORRY BTW   
> hehhehehehehehehhhhh

The boy working the register at the roadside coffee stop is called Kyle, and he is twitchy and over-caffeinated and also he really doesn’t want to go home after his latest graveyard shift, because his dad is at home and it’s late enough at night that he’ll have come home from the bar, but early enough that he won’t have passed out in front of the television. 

Yesterday, two guys tipped Kyle an extra five dollars. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things but it was enough to shove in his back pocket, add to the jar under his mattress that Kyle has privately dubbed  _ the running away fund.  _

Someday he’s going to do it. 

Someday he’s really going to do it, and then they’ll be sorry. 

For now, though, he’s bouncing from foot to foot in terror and exhaustion. Nobody comes in at this time of night. 

Until two people troop inside, and Kyle’s heart momentarily stops. “Hiwelcometothecoffeebean-”

“Hi, Kyle,” says the woman with the sort of smile his ex-girlfriend used to give him when she wanted him to do things he didn’t particularly want to do. It takes him three seconds to realise she’s read the name badge pinned to his shirt, three seconds during which his heart stops and his breath catches in his throat. 

“H-hello,” he manages. 

“Heya, kiddo,” says the man trailing behind her. He’s far taller than she is and far thinner - where she is built to be curves and soft edges, the man is sharp and spiked and constantly fluid. His feet move across the floor in constant rhythm, and his orange hair falls across one eye. His other eye is exposed and focused on Kyle with predatory intent. 

Kyle shudders. What c-can I serve you with tonight?”

The woman leans forward, chocolate hair spilling over dark shoulders, strands falling over her exposed collarbones and drawing Kyle’s eye to her cleavage. He wonders if she’s trying to pick him up. He wonders if they’re going to tip him. He wonders if his dad has found the jar yet. “I don’t know, Kyle. What’s on offer?”

“B-black bean espresso,” Kyle stammers. He backs into the soft drink dispenser, banging his back right where he’d hurt it earlier falling off his bike. (He fell off his bike, man, what else could it have been?) (Leave me alone.) 

The man makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “This one’s  _ boring,  _ Hatsu. C’mon, just let me use Right Red Eye-”

“But I haven’t used Bright Red Lip in such a long time,” says the woman, looking through her lashes at Kyle. Kyle realises, far too late, that there is more danger in her soft chocolate gaze than there would ever be in the man’s searching red pupils. 

“Use it on  _ fucking Tooru  _ when we find him.”

“But I have a lot of Bright Red Lip, and Tooru’s only one guy,” mumbles the woman. Her voice rolls like soft ocean waves, like velvet cream, and Kyle is shaking so hard his elbow turns on the Pepsi button. Lukewarm fizz spills down the sleeve of his shirt, and he wants to cry. 

Is Bright Red Lip a drug? What’s Right Red Eye? 

“I-I just serve coffee-”

The woman takes a tube of lipstick out of her pocket and takes it out of the silver lid with an ominous click. It takes three twists to take it out, three mechanical, sharp twists of a bare wrist. The lipstick looks unused. It’s the exact bright red of the pig heart Kyle had to dissect in Biology class last year, right before he’d thrown up and subsequently had the shit beaten out of him for being too much of a pussy to deal with a little congealed pig. 

“Fine, but before you start I want black-bean espresso. Kid, make me black-bean espresso.” 

Kyle does, with tears gathering behind his eyes. The man downs it in three gulps. “Okay, Hatsu, go for it.”

The woman reaches across the counter for Kyle’s arm. “Don’t worry. This won’t hurt a bit,” she says, and draws a long line of burning red pain down his forearm. 

***

“Aw, they’re cuddling.”

“They’re probably huddled together for warmth. Couldn’t you have got them to make up in someplace  _ warmer?  _ God, I’m freezing and  _ I  _ didn’t sleep down here.” 

“Shut up and let them sleep. Iwaizumi’s been driving so much the past few days I’m surprised his eyes aren’t falling out of his head.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Hajime, all right.”

***

Much later, into the next day, when Hajime wakes up proper - it’s five in the morning, he estimates by the sunlight just beginning to spill pink and pearly newborn through the window - Oikawa is asleep, their sleeping bags are zipped together, and his face is nestled into the curve of Hajime’s neck and shoulder, his lips as soft as baby’s breath against the sensitive skin of Hajime’s throat.

Hajime groans quietly when he remembers the red marks on his neck, the very reasons he’s shivering from the contact. Tetsurou is going to tease him  _ so much.  _

He shifts a tiny bit, and arms tighten around his waist. “Stay here a m’ment,” mumbles Oikawa, still half asleep. “They’re gonna be… stupid. ‘M tired. Stay tired.”

“Stay tired?”

“You said don’t make ‘t weird. ‘M not makin’ it weird. ‘M makin’ it tired.”

“Okay, then, you do that.”

“Mm. Thanks, Iwa-chan. F’r not makin’ it weird.”

Hajime flops back down on the pillow, one that Bokuto hid down here back when he skipped out of the room. “I think it’s gone beyond weird at this point, Oikawa,” he mumbles, although Oikawa has gone back to sleep and isn’t awake enough anyway to understand. But it  _ has  _ gone weird. Hajime never remembers waking up cuddled to Yuuji, to Terushima, and he never remembers having emotional talks with him at stupid hours in the morning. 

He’d known Terushima for a decade. He’s known Oikawa for a week, or less. 

He feels closer to Oikawa than he ever did to Terushima. 

Maybe it should freak Hajime out, but he’s already so freaked out by everything happening at the moment that, honestly, he just feels… less alone. 

Oikawa mumbles against his neck.

Yeah. Less alone. 

Hajime remembers a little more of himself in the following five minutes, remembers enough to poke Oikawa in the ribs. “Hey. Hey, wake up, the rest will be up soon, and I need to talk to you.”

“You said no weird!” Oikawa whines. Sleep makes him a toddler, apparently. “I was keeping the weird to a minimum! And now you want to talk!”

Hajime flushes dark red. “Not about  _ that.”  _

“Oh. What, then?” Oikawa asks, keeping his hands wrapped around Hajime’s middle, but actually opening his eyes this time. 

There’s an eyelash on his cheek, just above a pale freckle, and Hajime brushes it away with a gentle swipe of his thumb. “About… about the house. And Hinata. And the other dots on the map. Are we going to tell him?”

“Hmm. About the book? And his dad? And the department? Should we tell him  _ now?”  _ Oikawa looks serious, which is quite impressive for someone who was fast asleep five minutes ago. “I know… I know it’s shitty to keep it from him, but he’s still recovering from Hikaru’s shot. He’ll say he isn’t, but he is, and ever since the Hinata Thing he’s been slower to recover. I’m not saying we shouldn’t, just… lets leave it.”

“Jesus, you woke up fast,” Hajime mutters. He knows Oikawa’s right. “Okay, yeah, but  _ when  _ do we tell him?”

Oikawa shrugs bonelessly. “As soon as we can’t get away with it anymore.”

The sun rises a little more, blushing pink giving way to pale buttercup yellow. It casts a glow on Oikawa’s cheeks, giving him a miniature halo, and Hajime can’t help but smile. “That’s kind of cheating.”

“‘S not cheating. ‘S being smart, there’s a difference,” Oikawa says. “If he never asks, we never tell.”

“We have to tell at some point.”

“Tell who what, lovebirds?” 

Hajime squeaks in fright and Oikawa jumps as - surprise surprise, Tetsurou, comes strolling casually around the corner, hands in the pockets of a new pair of jeans, a black tank top on that’s a little too loose and a little too long. His hair falls forward over his face, unbrushed, and the sideways smirk dangling from his mouth confirms Hajime’s worst fears. 

_ Teasing.  _ “Fuck off, ‘Suro,” he groans, turning his head so the side of his neck isn’t as exposed. 

Tetsurou grins a glimmering grin. “So did you have wonderful, beautiful, emotional make-up sex? Or hate sex? Or weird office roleplay sex? Hey, Oikawa, one time I walked in on Hajime and Terushima-”

“Tetsurou, fuck off to hell!” Hajime shrieks, throwing the first thing that comes to hand - Oikawa’s discarded Batman hoodie from yesterday, the left wrist circled in blood 

_ The left wrist circled in blood?  _

“Hey, what the fuck?” Tetsurou says, grabbing it, and Oikawa’s hand (his  _ right  _ hand) tightens around Hajime’s inside the sleeping bag. Just as Hajime is about to tell his cousin to fuck off again, but in that tone of voice meaning Tetsurou will  _ really  _ obey, Tetsurou says: “Hajime, is this yours? It’s way too long for you, just sayin’. And Batman? What are you, twelve?”

“Just give it back and piss off,” Hajime says with a dry throat. 

Tetsurou balls it up and throws it. “Akaashi’s making breakfast, and Hinata’s finally woken up. I think Kageyama was about to have a heart attack when he did. That kid’s such a mother.”

“We’ll be up in a second,” rasps Hajime, and watches him leave, counts to five, and then-

“It’s not what you think!”

Hajime squints at Oikawa in the dawn light. “I don’t know what to think, O- Tooru,” he corrects, noticing how Oikawa relaxes a little with that. “Go on, explain.”

“It’s freaky paranormal shit, though,” Oikawa says, less squeaky than before. “You don’t like freaky paranormal shit.”

Hajime winces at the dig to their argument last night. “I like it plenty, just not when it’s trying to kill us, or whatever. So what  _ new  _ freaky paranormal shit has your wrist bleeding like you’re…” That one fades into the pointed silence that follows. 

Oikawa winces. “Okay, don’t laugh. Actually, you won’t laugh, this is not a laughing situation. Um… Makki. It’s Makki’s fault.”

Just to make sure, Hajime waits a beat for the punchline, but all that happens is Oikawa’s teeth tearing off a strip of skin from his pale lips, red blood welling up on the spot, the halo slipping from the crown of his head as the sun rises further. “Makki,” he says flatly. “Makki, as in Hanamaki, as in the one that died when Hinata… that. That Makki?”

“Yeah.” 

“O...kay, so let’s say I don’t buy that.  _ How in the fuck  _ is a dead person hurting you?”

Oikawa shrugs. “That sounds so  _ melodramatic,  _ Iwa-chan,” he says reproachfully, as though  _ Hajime  _ is being the unreasonable one. (Hajime wonders if it’s too much to ask for a normal conversation, or a normal day. Waking up with Oikawa and not talking about freaky paranormal shit sounds  _ amazing. _ ) “Really, it’s almost nothing.”

“Is he a zombie or something?”

“Hah! No, but… No, Hatsu made sure of that,” Oikawa says with a cryptic tinge to his voice. “He’s… it’s dreams? It’s honestly no big deal, I just dreamt it and it was back in the lab after the Hinata Thing, and the handcuff was too small, so it cut. That’s  _ it.”  _

“You have a really skewed perspective of what’s normal and what isn’t, you know,” Hajime sighs, but relaxes. “You don’t wanna know what I thought.”

“I- I’m pretty sure I can guess, you know,” Oikawa fiddles with the sleeve  _ not  _ covered in his own blood. “You’re an idiot, Iwa-chan.”

“And fuck you, too,” Hajime says, but he doesn’t complain when Oikawa presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

“So, we’re okay?”

Hajime slips his hand around Oikawa’s waist, thumb rubbing over the curve of his hipbone. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.” More words will need to come later, he thinks distantly, but for now he’ll take as much of dawnlight kisses and gentle fingers on his jawline as he can. 

Hajime is greedy, and he doesn’t notice when Oikawa’s wrist brushes his shoulder, leaving an accidental droplet of oddly thick, dark blood, sinking dry into the skin unnoticed. 

Hajime is greedy, and he doesn’t notice when Oikawa’s hand in his back pocket drops something into it.

Hajime is greedy, and he is running out of time. 

***

“You need two sites for this map of yours, right, and then you can head off to the location?” Bokuto asks, mouth full of thickly-buttered toast, headphones around his neck. “I mean, Sawamura’s got that thing of his, the specifics, but it’s definitely two?”

“Probably one would do,” Oikawa announces. He’s got his arms wrapped around Hajime’s waist, his chin - his  _ very pointy chin, Oikawa, fuck off -  _ resting on Hajime’s shoulder. “Sawamura exaggerates.”

Bokuto nods. “Well, Lev and Yaku just texted in telling me about this place they’d just got rid of, something about the Greys, and a whole shitton of cat emojis, so it’s probably Lev with the phone. You wanna ring them and find out what’s up? It’d save you doing another location.”

In the background, Hinata is squealing excitedly at something Kenma has, while Kageyama tells him to shush with fond exasperation.

In the foreground, Oikawa is squealing gratefully at Bokuto, while Hajime thinks his eardrums might burst. 

“Phone’s over there!” Akaashi calls, as though he knows what they’re talking about. Hey, from what Hajime’s observed from him and Bokuto, he probably does. 

“Thanks! Akaashi, I love you!” Oikawa bounces from Hajime’s side to the collection of ancient mobile phones sitting on top of a pile of boxes. Motorola and Nokia, the sort of phones Hajime would use as a doorstop. 

Bokuto snorts in laughter. “And what are  _ you  _ going to do, Ford? Iwaizumi Hajime, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hajime confirms, trying to shake the feeling that he’s being sized up, because Kenma isn’t watching him at the moment and he knows the feeling of being watched, usually by Tetsurou’s boyfriend. (Yes, he remembers Hiyaru, even if Tetsurou wants to forget.)

“Well?” Prompts the presenter and Hajime realises he’s spaced out. 

He coughs embarrassedly. “Um. I thought I might go get gas. I mean, if we’re still a million miles away, I’m pretty sure whatever was left in the tank isn’t going to get us there.”

“Hey! Get some for the bikes, too, Hajime!” Tetsurou calls. 

Hajime flips him off. 

Always good to have familial banter. 

Bokuto hits a few buttons on his laptop -  _ While you just stayed in your room -  _ before turning back to Hajime again, pointing at a cardboard box near the door. “Hey, there’s empty gasoline cans in there. Refill ‘em all - Akaasshiiiii! Akaaaaaaaaaashiiiiiiiiiii-”

“What?” Akaashi shouts, walking around a stack of boxes with what looks like a whole loaf of buttered bread on a plastic plate. “Toast, Kou?”

“I love you,” Bokuto snatches three slices and points to yet another box. Spitting out toast crumbs, he says: “Keiiiijiiii, give H’jme m’ney for - ow - f’r gas. VW. Gas. Gas money. How d’d we afford this butter?”

“With a bit of the gas money,” Akaashi says dryly, but there’s something in the way his hand lingers on Bokuto’s shoulder that makes Hajime think maybe quite a bit more of their relationship is acted than he thought. “Don’t worry, there’s still a shitton left. You need a hand down with the cans?” He asks, handing Hajime two handfuls of crumpled bills. “Try not to spend it all, that’s our food money too. Say… spend half, maximum, and even then Kou might stop talking to you.”

Hajime blinks. “Nah, I’ll just carry the box down…. Man, we don’t need your food money gas. Gas food money. Fuck, you know what I mean, we don’t -  I don’t wanna-”

“He exaggerates,” Bokuto waves a dismissive hand, using the other to set up another mid-morning Spotify playlist. “Go get gas, my child! Go! Go!”

“Have fun, Iwa-chan!” Oikawa calls, phone pressed to his cheek. He hops over, still on the phone, and brushes his lips against Hajime’s. “We’ll talk when you get back, yeah?” He mumbles. 

“Yeah,” Hajime stammers. (Fuck Oikawa and his alternating states of murderous awkwardness or stupid smoothness.)

“Sorry, Lev! Keep talking, keep talking…” 

So Hajime staggers down the flights of stairs with a cardboard box in his arms and two hundred dollars shoved in his front jeans pocket. He’s going to take the Ford just for old times sake, and because the VW is such a bitch to drive, and because it’s  _ still his car.  _ He used to drive it out of the city when Akane made him call home. There are watermarks on the headrest of the passenger seat because Hajime used to take it off to use as a pillow, and he’s  _ not  _ one to cry easily, but sometimes he just had to. 

So he dumps the box in the backseat, digs the keys out of the glovebox where Kageyama dropped them, and waves up at Oikawa leaning out of the fourth-floor window, and blushes.

_ Hajime blushes.  _ He hates himself a tiny bit. 

The Ford smells differently now, slightly smokier, peachier. (That’s Oikawa. Oikawa, leaning over him smelling of smoke and peaches, asking him what he was so afraid of.) 

(Hajime will remember that moment until the end of his life. The smell of smoke and peaches and excited fear crystallising on the air.)

“Hello, baby,” he mumbles when the engine purrs to life. Okay, it doesn’t purr, it coughs, but Hajime can dream, right? It’s still his car. 

Hajime drives slowly out of the dirt track from the abandoned factory, relishing the working aircon and the suspension that doesn’t send him bouncing all over the car. Most of all he enjoys the nice, metallic red colour. No tango orange for  _ this  _ ride, no thank  _ you.  _

And the road, while not as abandoned as it would be in the middle of the night, is pleasantly quiet despite the time. Everyone’s gone to work and everyone else is at home, leaving Hajime and a few other stragglers to lift fingers from the wheels in nods of acknowledgement to each other. 

Road signs point to a gas station at the third turn off on the left. 

Okay. Say, twenty minutes, and Hajime can enjoy the drive. 

When driving, some people - especially people like Hajime, if he’s being totally honest - were at their easiest, their most relaxed. Hajime is perfectly capable of driving and dreaming, and God knows he’s done it often enough. 

All the same, it’s a tiny bit creepy for him to turn, five minutes into the journey, and see a man sitting beside him. 

A man in a blue button down, the right side stained dark, rusted red. His light brown hair is parted at the right to show a hole right into his skull, dripping soft, grey goo down his pale neck. He smiles. “Heya, Hajime.” 

“Who the  _ fuck  _ are you?” Hajime almost crashes into the back of a truck in shock, but pulls back at the last second. “Who the-”

“Takahiro Hanamaki. You might have heard of me before. Tooru sure likes telling people about it,” replies the… Hajime hesitates to call it a  _ body,  _ but it’s leaking bits of brain. What else could it be? 

He shifts into sixth. Calmly steers himself into the fast lane. Overtakes the truck. “Am I dead or sleeping or something?”

“Nope,” says Hanamaki, popping the ‘p’. “See, I’ve been in Tooru’s head ever since he killed me, but ever since he got us back to the lab  _ after  _ I died… well, Hatsu locked him to the desk so he couldn’t go out killing any more valued employees, and his wrists have gotten bigger since he started eating two meals a day. So of  _ course  _ he hurt himself. My luck he got me to you!”

“What,” Hajime says flatly, “The. Fuck. Are. You. Talking. About.”

Hanamaki taps a finger on Hajime’s shoulder, and Hajime flinches away - the flesh is soggy and cold, like pizza left out overnight. “Tooru got his blood on you. More accurately, Tooru transferred Tooru-me to you, because  _ dreams!  _ The power of  _ dreams!”  _

“So you’re telling me you’re dead Hanamaki.”

The thing opposite him shakes its head cheerfully. “Even better. I’m  _ Tooru’s understanding  _ of Hanamaki, which is  _ so  _ much more informative than the real thing. You can find out just how much that bastard’s been lying, if you were so inclined.”

“But I’m not, so get the fuck out of my car.”

“At least give me a ride to the gas station,  _ Iwa-chan.  _ It’s been so long since I’ve had coffee. Buy me some and then I’ll get out of your hair, huh?” Hanamaki, or the thing with brains oozing out of it calling itself Hanamaki, starts to fiddle with the radio controls, trying to turn off the 121-129.

Hajime slaps the hand away. “Don’t touch my car.”

_ “Don’t touch my car,”  _ the thing mocks, voice curiously scratchy, like something’s crawled into the voicebox and stayed there. Maybe something has. A worm in the larynx, a literal frog in the throat…

“Hey. Hey, Iwa-chan.”

“Don’t call me that. It’s stupid,” snaps Hajime, pressing his foot harder down on the accelerator, leaving the truck to chug along at fifty miles an hour. Hajime long takes over the speed limit - and it’s not like he has a life to wreck with arrest, or a car to charge the fine to. 

Hanamaki giggles. It’s annoying. “Tooru calls you Iwa-chan.”

“Tooru can call me whatever the fuck he likes, just not some gross thing from a TV show. You can get the fuck out of my car, or just shut up, whichever sounds more preferable,” Hajime growls angrily. 

On the radio, as though nothing’s wrong, Bokuto is cheerily describing what he had for breakfast. 

“That’s cute, Iwa-chan, that’s cute,” Hanamaki nods like a psychiatrist that Hajime is spilling his guts to. “Did Tooru tell you about me?”

“He told me you died two years ago,” Hajime says when it becomes clear that this… thing, it isn’t going to be leaving his car anytime soon. “He told me you died when he and Kageyama went to go rescue Hinata from the ship. He told me he used you for the car, at first, and… fuck, I don’t know  _ who  _ it was, told me everyone at the clinic thought he was going to off himself after you died. That doesn’t seem like the actions of someone that killed you, no offense.”

“Nope. Sounds more like guilt to me.”

The Ford swerves from the fast lane in front of a Merc for three seconds, resulting in angry horns from the Merc and Hajime’s apologetic beep in return. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Guilt!” Hanamaki shoves his finger inside the hole of his skull like someone clearing out the inside of their ear. “Tell me, Iwa-chan, if you were responsible for the death of someone you  _ knew  _ needed to die, but that you loved and respected, wouldn’t you think of doing yourself in, too?”

“No, because  _ Tooru wouldn’t do that,” _ says Hajime. 

_ (“I’m  _ **_Tooru’s understanding_ ** _ of Hanamaki, which is so much more informative than the real thing. You can find out just how much that bastard’s been lying, if you were so inclined.”) _

(The fuck does that actually mean?) 

“Back when we worked at the department, did he tell you that?” Hanamaki asks, studying his red, inflamed nail beds. 

“I-”

“I was there before he was. Son of a technician, you know how it is. Tooru came in when he was… fifteen? Tiny. He was  _ tiny.  _ All fluffy hair and big eyes and “wow! Aliens!” and green sneakers. See, Tooru’s a little genius, and that’s what he won’t tell you. He’s a certified over-150 IQ points member, or whatever, and they still needed to find fucking Hinata. The old one, not the small one.”

“The man in the house,” Hajime breathes. 

He doesn’t mean to be heard, but the thing beside him nods. “Yeah, him. Fucking traitor. He said he would rather give his son than hand the department his map, and Hatsu and Hikaru’s dad - Takaki’s uncle - he said, fine then, he told old Hinata to bring either the map or the kid to the meeting place, and that asshole brought the kid. His wife was dead. He’d gone batshit crazy in that house of his.”

“But his dairy - his journal entries -”

Hanamaki gives Hajime a pitying look, like Hajime is a particularly stupid beaten dog, staying in the dark. “Dude, aren’t you listening? He went mad. Spent the rest of his life convincing himself the department had snatched his kid, died alone covered in made-up journal entries.”

“No. No, that’s not what happened?”

“Says who?” A mocking smile. 

There’s a maggot in between Hanamaki’s front teeth. Hajime looks away as it drops out of his mouth and the thing beside him flicks it out the window.  

“Says Tooru. I believe him-”

“I  _ am  _ him. I come from his head! These are just the bits he didn’t tell you.”

“So he knew? About the kidna- this supposed kidnap?” Hajime corrects himself and bites his tongue, turning down the radio as Bokuto starts playing a song. One he doesn’t know. 

_ We separated the infatuation from the unlovable souls…  _

“Of course he knew. He was a trusted member of the department for… however-the-fuck long it was. Hatsu and Hikaru treated him like the third triplet, the one that died-”

“He said that was a lie!”

“Nah, there really was one. Haiyara, her name was. What, you surprised?” Hanamaki watches Hajime carefully, and Hajime thinks he controls his face carefully, but obviously something shows. The thing laughs. “‘Course you are. Well, he was a triplet until he met the ghost kid.”

“K- Tobio. His name is Tobio.”

“Ah, yeah, that kid. Well, the kid convinced Tooru to join the 121-129, fucking alien creeps-”

“Isn’t the department a bunch of alien creeps?”

“Nah. We’re government sanctioned. These guys? Don’t have rules. Don’t have morals. You were at the clinic, right? Did you see all the guns and the drugs and shit? Sugawara and Sawamura steal it from the local hospital. None of them have gun licenses.  _ They kill people,  _ Iwa-chan, and I’m exhibit A of that particular character trait.” Hanamaki  _ just keeps talking  _ and oh, God, Hajime wants him to stop. 

Stop. 

Stop, while there’s still a chance this could be a bad dream. 

“So, you wanna know how Tooru killed me?”

“No!”

“Too bad.” Hanamaki turns up the radio. 

_ The unlovable souls found nothing within, the mirrored souls lost shiny sheen, the broken souls cracked and green…  _

“I got the car. ‘Course I did. I liked Tooru, everybody did, he was like our gappy teeth mascot, except he was older. My age. Nineteen. Picked up that ghost kid, who said he heard voices in the sky, and all the time I had to play along with the 121-129. I enjoyed myself, y’know?” 

“Okay.”

“Sound familiar?”

Hajime scowls. “Keep trying. And I thought Hinata was kidnapped by you lot, according to you, so what-”

Hanamaki makes a little superior scoffing noise out of the back of his throat. “You didn’t believe in the aliens, did you? That’s  _ our  _ ship. We have dorms up there, a science clinic, and we were keeping the kid out of the way of his dad. We didn’t know he’d died until it was too late. So, anyway, me and Tooru and ghost kid-”

“Tobio-”

“Ghost kid, we all drove around, fuckin’ brilliant. Day before we were due to find Hinata, I spilt milk on my last clean shirt. Tooru lent me this one,” Hanamaki plucks at his blue button down, “And it was raining so he gave me his hat, this black baseball cap with an alien on it, all Fox Mulder style. I was like, hey, that’s nice of him, right? Usually Tooru  _ never  _ lends me stuff. So I thanked him and put the clothes on and then he went around the back of the car and called Hatsu.”

Hajime almost crashes again. “No, he  _ didn’t!”  _

“Sorry, man. He did.” Hanamaki pats Hajime’s arm sympathetically. “I only found out about this bit once I got into his head. He told them he’d meet them at this place, at this time, and he’d come to his senses, he was gonna hand over Hinata and the ghost kid.”

“Tobio.”

_ unlovable souls drifting alone, hating each other and hating themselves, unlovable souls, empty shells... _

“Then he comes and tells me, alive me, and ghost kid-”

“Tobio!”

_ Pulled apart by the differences in their own heads…  _

“He tells us that Hatsu and Hikaru and Takaki are following us, and he sends me off to distract them. Tells me that they won’t kill me because it’s me, and they know I’ve been forced into this whole thing by Tooru himself. It was sunset, then. So I hopped in my little Fiat 500, black, loved her like a child, and drove to where he told me to go.”

Hajime’s throat is dry. He wishes this were less believable. 

_ unlovable souls that killed their own selves, killed each other, left each other for dead…  _

“It was dark, then. And I was wearing Tooru’s favourite button down and Tooru’s favourite hat. And they shot me, didn’t they? I always wondered why he was so willing to part with them, y’know, seeing as he loved them so much, but it made so much more sense when I got into his head. He really likes you, Iwa-chan. He reckons you’re going to leave him sometime, and he isn’t sure he can cope with it.” A sudden bitter bark of laughter. “Isn’t that fucking  _ great?”  _

“It’s not true.”

Hanamaki shrugs. Dead, bloodshot eyes drift down to Hajime’s pockets. “If only there was a way of  _ really  _ hearing both sides of the story, huh? If only. Now, wouldn’t that be great? Oh. We’re here. Buy me a cup of coffee.”

***

The only noise in the car is the click-click of Takaki’s Beretta as he flicks the safety on and off.

Hikaru taps his long fingers on the doorhandle, which has been childlocked by Hatsu, driving. “So none of them are dead yet,” he says eventually.

Click. 

“Iwaizumi from the gas station, we know Tooru’s got him, and Kageyama Tobio and the little Hinata. That last one, the one at the coffee stop, he said there were bikes. That means Kuroo Tetsurou and Kozume Kenma, too.”

“Fuck,” Hikaru says mildly.

Click. 

Hatsu swerves expertly into the fast lane, overtaking a truck. “But I get the feeling something’s going to happen soon. We can’t keep stopping in gas stations to redden people up.”

“They all think you’re a hooker, anyway.”

Click. 

“They all think you’re insane, anyway.”

Click. 

Hikaru’s drumming increases, a steady patter-patter against the smooth black leather. “I think we’ll have someone by the end of the day. If not Tooru, then the little Hinata, or someone like that. And we need the map to get the second key before he does.”

“We have the first already,” Hatsu says. 

“Hm.”

Click. 

“But,” and she overtakes another truck, “He has the third. Where do you think he’s hidden it?” 

“He can’t be carrying it with him, that’s for certain,” muses Hikaru, his one uncovered red eye staring into the middle distance. “I’d have hidden it somewhere, if I were him.” 

“I’d have given it to someone. Probably the little Hinata or Kageyama Tobio, he seems to be the closest to those two, and we  _ did  _ search the clinic thoroughly.”

Click.

Hikaru hums again. “ _ There’s  _ a wasp’s nest we’ll need to return to.”

“Later. Not now,” Hatsu says. She turns off at the third stop, a sign telling her there’s a gas station in five miles. “After this is over, we’ll go get rid of them, although I think Sugawara could be valuable. Tsukishima Kei, too.”

“They’re both too attached.” 

“Ah. Sawamura Daichi and Yamaguchi Tadashi.”

Click. 

“Yeah. Them.”

Click. 

Which is right when Hatsu’s black phone begins to ring, and when a wide smile oozes its way up Hikaru’s face, eating the rest of his features. “Will you answer it, or me?”

Click. 

***

“I feel weird,” Oikawa says quietly. 

Koutarou’s head flies up at the same time as Kenma’s, because both of them have picked up on the subtle inflection that tells Oikawa’s normal, joking tone from this one. Oikawa sits in the corner, back against the doorframe, right hand massaging his forehead and left hand shoved deep in his pocket. Nobody else has noticed - Hinata and Kageyama are playing Go Fish, Kuroo is outside fiddling with his bike, and Keiji is asleep after an incredibly late Story Night. 

“I feel  _ really  _ weird,” Oikawa mumbles, blinking sluggishly. “W-where’s Hajime?”

_ Hajime now, but Iwaizumi to his face. Interesting.  _ “He went to go get gas, remember?” Koutarou says gently, making eye contact with Kenma over Oikawa’s head. “Remember?”

“Gas. Yeah. Yeah, I remember.”

“Do you?” Kenma asks.

“‘Course. Of course I- I do.  _ Fuck,  _ my head hurts.” He pokes the right side of his head. “Feels like my brains are leaking out right  _ here.  _ Is i-it a migraine? Do you have ibuprofen?” 

“Migraines aren’t usually brain leaks,” Kenma observes. He’s still in his sleeping bag, a tiny burrito with cat eyes and pale, pale patches of sleepless nights under his eyes. “Tooru, why is Hajime so important?”

Oikawa closes his eyes. Rubs his side. “God, feels like I’ve been  _ shot.”  _

“Tooru?”

Koutarou gets a creeping feeling up his spine.  _ All’s not well,  _ like they used to shout in that cartoon he watched when his dad was out of the house.  _ All’s not well.  _ And the song he’s queued up… 

_ unlovable souls, drifting apart, unlovable souls, stolen hearts…  _

“Hajime has the key,” Oikawa manages. Koutarou flinches backwards when he sees the first salty trickle of a tear dripping down his cheek. “Hajime has the key and I need Hajime and something’s gone wrong, something’s gone  _ wrong…”  _

“What?” 

Oikawa grits his teeth and lifts his left hand. “Something’s gone  _ wrong,  _ Bokuto,” he almost-sobs, and shakes down the sleeve of his shirt. “Look. L-look, fuck, fuck, just look-”

Koutarou squints at the arm. “What am I meant to be looking at?”

“T-the wrist.”

“There’s nothing there, Tooru, I - have you lost something?”

“Yeah,” Oikawa says, a sheen of sweat covering his upper lip. “Yeah, I have.” 

_ Unlovable souls, pulled together by pain, _ _   
_ _ Found each other, each other, shelter from the rain.  _ _   
_ _ But we pulled them apart, unlovable souls,  _ _   
_ _ Separated infatuation from lust,  _ _   
_ _ Obsession from love, _ _   
_ _ Need from want and want from need,  _ _   
_ __ And need from the unlovable, unlovable souls. 

_ Unlovable souls, drifting alone in their hells, _ _   
_ _ Hating each other and hating themselves,  _ _   
_ _ Unlovable souls, empty husked shells,  _ _   
_ _ Torn apart by the differences in their own heads,  _ _   
_ _ Obsession from love,  _ _   
_ _ Need from want and want from need,  _ _   
_ __ Left greed in the unlovable, unlovable souls. 

_ Unlovable souls killed their own selves,  _ _   
_ _ Killed each other, left each other for dead.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i lied im not sorry at all shits gonna get real as of now  
> mewhheheheheheheh
> 
> if you would like to come yell at me for being an asshole : clearfullydearfully is the tumblr  
> clearfullydearful is the twitter 
> 
> also i exclusively listened to agust d by min yoongi while writing this bc kpop is life and so is min yoongi and thats why it sounds like a keyboard smash   
> soz  
> AS ALWAYS PLS REVIEW THANK YOU


	12. the shit gets realer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that fluff last chapter is p much it for a while. now is where we start going all experimental and also sad. BUT NEVER FEAR   
> REMEMBER  
> THERE IS NO MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH TAGGED

A story.

Way, way back, years and years ago, there was a man called Hinata Yana. He married the woman of his dreams when there was still time, when he worked with a group of idealistic people that dreamed of making sense of the world and finding life so they wouldn’t be so desperately lonely. 

They called themselves the Department of Investigative Abnormalities, because it was better than calling themselves nothing, even though they received the barest of drafts from the government annually, and their name wasn’t written on any official documents anywhere. It was Yana and a few others, just doing the best they could to live in a world of round holes when they themselves were irreversibly square pegs. 

He met the woman of his dreams when he was young and stupid and she was younger and stupider. She kissed him with lips red, red as cherries, and told him that she’d wait for him no matter where he went. 

In those days, the Department of Investigative Abnormalities was so small that she quickly became a part of them. 

And Yana grew up a little more, and in came two young men - two boys, really, hands clasped tightly, smiles on their faces. “There must only be a hundred and twenty or so of us in the whole  _ world,”  _ had joked old Nekomata, and the two boys looked at one another and smiled, and all of a sudden there was a radio station, the  _ old  _ kind, a pirate radio just for people like them, and they all chose nicknames like James Bond would have. Yana was the Little Giant, named after his tall temper and tiny stature, and it was all such a  _ game  _ it made him sick. 

The two radio hosts knew everybody. Everybody knew everybody. 

It was like a youth that continued long into Yana’s thirties, when by rights he should have grown a little older, a little wiser. 

They drunk together, they drove together, they fought and cried and won together, and they all became the closest of families, they with no homes and no families of their own, a patchwork quilt of people cast-off from the rest of the world. 

Even then, when Yana got older still and his wife’s smile faded slightly and her swollen belly stopped and - 

And the baby - 

Even then, the family was there. 

Until the man in the red suit, leading his two children by the hand, arrived, and the One Hundred Twenty and the Department of Investigative Abnormal Activities were split along the middle by that one, horrendous death, the kid screaming, his own kid just a baby, kid Kageyama Kuraka with his dead wife in his arms, and the man in the red suit holding the baby while his two children 

awful awful children that didnt smile would it be better if they smiled 

Baby Tobio sent away, and the radio used the names now, and Yana took his beautiful, faded wife and his wonderful, wonderful map and the  _ key,  _ and he ran in the dead of the night while the red suit man and his 

awful awful children that didnt smile would it be worse if they smiled

The key; that was the key. 

Yana found the letter from the children one night. Delivered, written in the curving ugly writing of a child just learned its letters, telling him that a flashing coin of blue and a flashing coin of red told them a flashing coin of yellow was the third.

The third key. 

_ His third key, the map would lead to the third key, the third key, the key to the mind, the key,  _

Yana began to hope again.

The letters continued even as she screamed and threw things and broke the radio, and when she did he just bought another one as Ukai and Takeda, sweet boys grown old - old old old and now old meant thirties and Yana was an old old old man 

old old when did that happen the man in the red suit 

And Shouyou was born and Yana’s beautiful, faded, faded wife shouted even more because Shouyou was a boy and she was frightened of the differences she saw every day,  _ life is more than inside jokes on the 121-129 -  _ and then, and then, and then she must have called them because he came barrelling in with his awful awful children 

that didnt smile 

would it be worse

better 

if they smiled

And they took his child, they took Shouyou,

they took him those children o god what did i do to deserve this i wrote my books i drove my car rivers of youth blood on my hands your fault your fault old old man

_ the rabbits in the letters lavender scented paper written in crayons CHILDREN OLD MAN CHILDREN _

and Yana sat in his chair and wrote letters to the children until the letters stopped, and then Yana sat in his chair and wrote letters to himself until he stopped

And then yana 

stopped

.

But it's just a story. And if you listen to stories too much, you'll never get anything done.

***

Hajime waits with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, scuffing his heels against the burnt asphalt, the phone burning guilt into his palm. There are three canisters full of gas by his feet, sloshing with black liquid the colour of betrayal, but he doesn’t think it’ll ever make it back to the abandoned factory and the two Suzuki bikes and the tango VW. 

The post-it is uncrumpled, held in his other hand. He’s already keyed in the number, already let it ring - twice, before Pinstripes, Hikaru, picked up. 

What annoys Hajime the most is how normal Hikaru sounds. Like a law student at Hajime’s college, confident and slightly overbearing, giving off  _ rich-daddy  _ vibes.  _ I can pay damages, man, don’t worry!  _ And he’s so calm, cool, collected, telling Hajime to wait at the gas station, and it takes Hajime an effort of will to remember the bulking Suit - Takaki - and the gun. 

But Oikawa lied. 

Oikawa lied. 

Hajime  _ knows  _ the thing didn’t lie, the thing calling himself Hanamaki. He’s not sure how he knows only that he  _ does,  _ and Oikawa lied. It stings something inside him, the same something that warmed to feel Oikawa asleep in his arms this morning. Whether Hanamaki told the truth or not is another thing, but Oikawa definitely lied, and it hurts. 

God. He sounds so melodramatic. 

It hurts more than it did when Yuuji told him he couldn’t keep doing this, when even Yuuji got sick of the sneaking around and the hiding and Hajime having panic attacks at three in the morning because he thought he saw Tetsurou’s bike on the roads. 

And that had hurt.

But Hajime had been a child, then, really.

Part of him, the rational part, wonders if he shouldn’t just ring Oikawa and ask him what’s going on, what  _ really  _ happened, but another part of him - the annoying part - has responded to the condescending way the Hanamaki-thing looked at him, as though Hajime is being led around by Oikawa like an obedient dog on a leash. Unthinking loyalty. 

Anyway, it’s not like he’s betraying anyone. He’s just going to find out the truth, and isn’t that fine? Isn’t that allowed and okay? He leans against the Ford, about to load the gas into the trunk, the keys in his hand so he can get back in if they want to… shoot him or something. 

He’s done road racing. Bikes, cars, anything, throwing them around country lanes with Tetsun and Akane and Tetsurou. Hajime is  _ good  _ at driving. 

He can throw them off. When he wants them.

After they’ve told him what they want to say. 

He’s going to go back to Oikawa, of course he is, to waking up with soft butter-sunlight kissing his right cheek and Oikawa kissing his left, to talking in the starlight while the end of a lit cigarette glows as bright as any star. All Hajime wants to do  _ now  _ is find out the truth, and not some warped… other. 

The black car pulls up.

Almost instinctively, Hajime’s hand tightens on the door of the car. He  _ will  _ get back in if they start to do something he doesn’t like. He  _ will  _ go back to Oikawa and the radio station and crackling pot noodle and telling fond anecdotes of people long dead. He  _ will.  _ All this is… all this is, is the truth, and the truth should be important. 

First to come out is the suited guy, Takaki, colourless hair falling over dark sunglasses, large, pale hands holding a Beretta like a water gun. The only sign that he has any humanity at all is at his feet, where Hajime notices one sock is black, one is grey. Apart from that? He could be a robot. 

“Hello,” says Hajime mechanically. He opens the door, but doesn’t get in. 

Next to come out is the pinstripes, Hikaru, with the darting red eye and the dancing feet. His orange hair, the colour of artificial dye, the colour of of cheap paint, still falls over his other eye, but the one in the open fixes on Hajime like a sniper fixing his sights. He smiles, and it takes over his whole face. “Iwaizumi Hajime! SuperStore!”

Last to come out is the red one. 

Hatsu. 

She’s the scariest, Hajime observes, frozen still against his Ford, a rabbit caught in the headlights. Red, red lipstick, chocolate hair tumbling like a waterfall of silky smoothness over her shoulders, skin the colour of a warm autumn evening, white shirt tied under her breasts and red skirt pulled up, up, up her waist, making her look like a sinister pin-up model rather than a woman a few years older than Hajime himself. 

She has white-and-red shoes on. Little three-inch heels. They click against the asphalt in time to the clicking of Takaki’s Beretta as she comes closer, Hikaru one quarter step behind her. 

“Good morning.”

Hajime thinks his heart has stopped. “Good morning,” he says, and he doesn’t stutter. 

Hikaru smiles wider. Are his eyes moving out of the way of the advancing cheeks, curving upwards, smile carved into his face like an ugly scar? “Morning, SuperStore guy.”

The Beretta clicks. 

“Iwaizumi Hajime,” says Hajime. “My name is Iwaizumi Hajime.”

“I know,” Hikaru smiles, and taps his heels against the burning asphalt, shifting from side to side. 

The Beretta clicks. 

“I want to know what happened,” Hajime says, voice hoarse. He clears it, swipes the fear from the back of his throat and shoves it far, far down, away from the surface where it can stew  in peace. “I want to know what happened.”

“And, Iwaizumi Hajime, what makes you think Tooru hasn’t already told you what happened?” Hatsu steps even further forward, click- _ click- _ click, unfolding her arms, slipping a small hand into the pocket of her red skirt, letting the other hand drift to the breast pocket of her white shirt, pulling out an e-cigarette. She pulls deeply and exhales, and Hajime tastes raspberry refill on the air. “Hm?”

It sounds  _ stupid.  _ “Because,” Hajime begins carefully, and then decides he doesn’t care, “Because that - there was a man, a boy, in a blue shirt with his head dripping out of his head, and he said he was Hanamaki and that Tooru hadn’t told me the truth. So I want to know what  _ your  _ truth is, and then I’ll make up my own mind.”

Hikaru sniggers. “Very forward thinking of you, SuperStore guy. You’re worse than Tooru.  _ I  _ thought I’d killed you.”

“Obviously not.”

Another burst of raspberry flavoured air, and Hatsu smiles. It’s the smile of someone who definitely isn’t amused. “And what did this ghost of Hanamaki tell you, Iwaizumi Hajime?”

Hajime tells them. 

Hands gripping his car like a lifeline, unable to move, sentences punctuated by the clicking of the damned gun, he tells them Tooru’s version, stars-fear-heat-hands version, blood on lips and smoke in air and heart hammering hard,  _ what are you so afraid of?  _ Car keys biting his fingers, stuck in one place,  _ damned gun!  _ he tells them Hanamaki’s version, horror-sickness-maggots-car version, dreadful truth and false terror and wishing, wishing it wasn’t true, and vanishing like he never existed, a phantom of the mid-morning to vanish with the strength of noon sunlight. 

Something tastes sick in his mouth. He smells peaches, once, briefly, before raspberry crowds his nose and his mouth and his eyes with white vapour. “All I want is the truth,” he manages.

“The truth? The truth is worth a lot more than half-lies,” Hikaru says, lifting his hand to brush the hair from his other eye. 

Hatsu’s stopping arm snaps against the rising fingers with an audible snap. 

Hajime flinches.

“Time for all that later,” she says saccharine sweet a serpent sneaking near god hajime what have you  _ done  _

The Beretta clicks.

“Gun safety is always admirable, Takaki,” Hatsu says, stepping to one side. 

Click- _ click- _ click.

No warning. There’s never any warning. This isn’t a movie.

Takaki shoots. 

Hajime’s left side erupts, unfolds, blooms, a flower of red red pain as red as Hikaru’s slowly curving lips around the false cigarette, and he grunts. 

He’s always been anticlimactic.

Even when he’s been  _ shot  _ he’s anticlimactic. 

God, it hurts. 

_ God. It hurts.  _

“We’ll tell you the truth, Iwaizumi Hajime,” Hatsu says easily. “But we’ll get Tooru to tell it to you. Things always sound better coming out of Tooru’s mouth, don’t they?”

God.

Dimly Hajime knows he’s going to faint like a wilting daisy in summer burning heat, and he cant bring himself to care it hurts so much it hurts too much, and he feels like hes left something behind and it takes him a second to realise

_ tooru  _

and, gratefully, Iwaizumi Hajime slides down his open car door with his eyes drifting shut and his red hands clutching the hole in his side like it could slip between his fingers at any time. 

Click _ click _ click _ click  _

“That was surprisingly easy,” Hikaru says after a while, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. “I thought we’d just have to keep blowing people up until Tooru came out and gave us the map.”

Hikaru pulls a round, bronze disc out of her pocket, the yellow stone in the centre glinting in the sunlight. “Tooru will do anything for Iwaizumi Hajime, I’m sure. We’ll get key and map in no time, and then we can get the third.”

“You reckon Tooru’s told them?”

“About what?”

Hikaru grins. “Miyu and the rabbits,” he says, and it’s mocking in his wide smile. 

Hatsu shakes her head, a rare, slow smile creeping across her features. “I hope not. It’ll be far more fun to watch them realise it on their own.”

***

A story. 

One time, there was a kid, and he liked collecting sparkly pebbles. He lived in the countryside, so it wasn’t difficult to go wandering down to the river by his house, ankle-deep in soft, cool mud, grubby fingers questing through the stream and the banks for chips of quartz streaked with pink, yellow, and white impurities. 

The kid had a sister. Couple years older than him, big into her two rabbits Bing and Crisco. She was gonna breed them. 

One day he came home from school, this kid, and he threw his bag down and he took his shiny black shoes off and down he trotted, all smile, gangly limbs, dandelion seeds sticking to his legs and his hair and his clothes, down to the river.

Nobody knows how it got there. 

The kid knelt down. Seat of his pants got wet in the river-water, but he didn’t care. 

His method was to hunt through the mud until he found a hard thing, whether that be pebble or hard shell of snail or chunk of quartz or old fossil. 

(The fossils were cool.)

(Not as cool as the quartz, though.)

So the kid pulled his fingers through the mud until he felt two discs under his fingertips. Two discs, like coins, but when he rubbed his thumb over them - still under the mud - he felt raised centres. 

Hey, thought the kid, this could be fun! So he pulled them out, bronze coins twice as big as a nickel, a small chunk of sparkling stone in the centres - red and blue. 

And, ‘cause he was a good kid and he loved his sister, he gave her the red one, and then it  _ really  _ all went to shit. 

***

“Fuck!”

“Iwaizumi should have been back ten minutes ago,” Hinata says worriedly, hopping from foot to foot, his hand tucked into Kageyama’s. “He’s not back. He’s not back, Kenma, he’s not back!”

“I know, Shouyou,” mumbles Kenma. Glittering gold eyes stare at Oikawa, who’s been lifted to the sagging mattress in the corner of the room by Kuroo, and who is now curled in a ball clutching his left side, painful tears dripping down the end of his nose. “I know.”

Koutarou pulls Keiji closer toward him. “You told him where the nearest gas station was, yeah?”

“Yeah, so - unless something’s gone wrong-”

Kenma’s gaze snaps toward them. Two fingers draw a zip across his lips, eyebrows furrowed, pointing towards the anxious Hinata and the… 

And Oikawa. 

Kuroo’s vanished into some floor below, ever since Oikawa doubled over - “Feels like I’ve been  _ shot,”  _ he’d gasped, then blacked out for a couple of minutes from the sheer pain - and Koutarou guesses it can’t be easy, finding a cousin and then something ominous happening to the cousin’s…

Oikawa…

And the cousin not showing up again. 

With Hatsu and Hikaru so close to them, as well. Koutarou well remembers reporting on that attack on the clinic, and the five minutes when he thought Hinata and Kageyama had died, and those two weeks between when Oikawa ran away and when he got back on course with Iwaizumi. 

He bounces his leg against the floor, a relentless, anxious tattoo, while Hinata bounces up and down and Kageyama chews on his bottom lip and Oikawa clutches his left side, eyes screwed shut. Keiji is perfectly still, apart from the tapping of his index finger against his thigh, betraying his own nerves. 

On the 121-129 playlist, an upbeat song plays, but it sounds sinister in its happiness. 

Koutarou wants to turn it off. 

He can’t. The 121-129 hasn’t been off the air since Ukai and Takeda started it, all those years ago. The Old Guard. The 121-129 never turns off. The 121-129 isn’t even the radio, it’s more than the radio, but the radio is one of its hearts, and without it the whole operation would just  _ stop.  _

Abruptly, Oikawa sits up. His eyes are red-rimmed. Blood trickles from the corner of his bottom lip. “Hajime,” he says hoarsely. “Something  _ bad  _ has happened to Hajime.”

None of them say  _ he’s just a few minutes late;  _ they’ve all been in this game too long to put much stock in false hopes. It’s better to be pessimistic and then pleasantly surprised than to be optimistic and bitterly disappointed. 

“How do you know?” Kenma asks instead. 

Below them, something smashes. Koutarou flinches; so Kuroo has found something he can destroy that won’t fight back. A rusty filing cabinet, perhaps.

“How do you know, Oikawa?” He repeats.

Oikawa winces once more. “I just  _ do,  _ like a - like it’s… I think something’s happened to him. Something. Not an accident.”

“The department,” says Keiji, and they all flinch. 

“Yeah.”

Below, something crashes, and blood begins to drip from the side of Oikawa’s head, although there’s no accompanying wound, and Hinata starts crying very, very quietly into his sleeve. 

Kenma unwraps himself from the warm blanket he’s got himself into and throws it around his shoulders -  nods once, quietly, at Koutarou, who looks on the verge of tears himself, and goes to find Tetsurou. 

It’s not hard. 

Tetsurou isn’t great at controlling his emotions. Sure, for the first few minutes, maybe half an hour, he’ll have it under wraps. Only Kenma (and Koutarou) could tell a newly-angered Tetsurou is angry; his smile gets wider, his fists bunch up in his pockets, and he speaks too loud and too fast and bounces around too much. (It doesn’t scare Kenma, though, because he knows Tetsurou won’t hurt him. It took a time to prove, but now it’s proven, and it’s True.) 

After he’s finished being passive-aggressive, Tetsurou goes to someplace without any people and throws things. The new 121-129 is perfect for this. Three floors full of things he can destroy, and isn’t it wonderful?

Kenma sweeps down the stairs with the blanket around his shoulders, king of nothing. He doesn’t call out for Tetsurou, or he’ll run. 

(He thinks about running away, and about a black motorbike on a winter night, and a soft voice telling him there’s a hospital not far from here  _ they don’t take no names, kid, but I might. What is it, if you don’t mind me asking?  _ And he thinks about the emptiness in Hajime’s eyes every time he looked at Tooru last night, and he thinks about these things and he wishes he didn’t have to.)

Tetsurou is sitting next to a window. Funny - light, the light of mid-afternoon, is streaming through the open space. Kenma would have thought they were deep into the night, the dawn still a long way away. 

Beside him lies three rusted metal panels, blue paint crackling off them, a boot-print in the centre of each one. 

A sleeping bag. A pile of pillows.

So this is where Koutarou hid them last night in his master plan to get Oikawa and Hajime to talk to one another. Kenma sweeps over to Tetsurou and drops the blanket unceremoniously on his head.

“Kenma?”

“‘S me,” says Kenma quietly. “I thought you’d be down here.”

Tetsurou doesn’t move the blanket from his body, but he holds out an arm, curved around, creating a Kenma-shaped space in the piles of pillows and sleeping bags for Kenma to drop himself into, just like he was always meant to be here. (Sometimes Kenma wonders -) “Where else would I be?”

“Off. Driving. Ran off.” 

“I did that  _ once.”  _

“That’s what all the cool kids say. Only takes one puff to get you hooked.”

Tetsurou isn’t in the mood for Kenma’s roundabout way of conversation, though. Kenma knows this, knew this, but he can’t help but try. When Tetsurou doesn’t answer back, that’s when Kenma knows it’s serious. He already knew, of course, because it was impossible not to know when you looked at the tears soaking through Tobio’s shirt, the phantom pains and the blood. 

Things have gotten as bad as they did two years ago. 

Not quite so bad, yet. 

(No death, no announcement on the radio, no Koutarou doing his best not to cry over the airwaves, no strange kids stumbling into the clinic looking like death frozen over.)

(No death.)

(Not  _ yet.)  _

Kenma thinks that last thought and hates himself a tiny bit more than usual. He wriggles underneath the blanket, the two of them hidden in a white cavern. Comforting. 

“I last saw Hajime when I was shouting at him, y’know?”

Okay, so it’s confession time. Get it off your chest all in one go, Kenma figures, and then it’ll be easier to do whatever needs to be done. Easier. And Kenma is a good listener. He kisses the spot just beneath Tetsurou’s ear. “Go ahead.”

“Hajime got us caught.” Tetsurou says. “Me and him and Tetsun all going out with guys from the village, and Hajime and Terushima were the worst of the six of us. ‘Shima used to come around and spend the night while everyone was in the house, even. And then one day Hajime and ‘Shima got caught, and then the six of us got caught, and I yelled at Hajime - everyone did, even nonna - and then I went on my bike and then I’d faked my death and I didn’t even realise it.”

Kenma is bad at this. 

“I’m bad at this,” he says softly, “But that’s just siblings. Cousins. I think, anyway. And he’s not dead.”

“But you know Oikawa. He’s said he feels like he’s been shot-”

“‘Surou-”

“Like he’s been  _ shot. _ I saw them this morning. Sickening, it was. All cuddled together like they’d been married fifty years.”

Kenma kisses him again, on the corner of his mouth. “Nothing wrong with that. We have to help Hajime, not mope.”

“I’m not fucking moping.”

Kenma is the  _ king  _ of pointed silences. He employs one now, throwing it in the air like a cloud of fog, and for good measure, raises an eyebrow. “You are. This is textbook moping. Hajime-”

“Hajime was my brother,” Tetsurou says sullenly. “He was as good as, anyway, and now Oikawa is...  and Hajime could be...”

“Remember,” interrupts Kenma, practically shouting compared to his normal tone of voice, “Remember when Yaku vanished and Lev kicked with us for six months? He cried for half a year, he cried on the funeral broadcast, but when you mentioned _ doing something  _ instead of sitting on the back of a bike and crying, he stopped. He started searching instead. If Lev hadn't looked, Yaku would be dead, and we'd all be down by one. If Lev had sat here with a blanket over his head, we wouldn't have found him. Ever.” 

“It's been twenty minutes, not three months,” Tetsurou mumbles.  

Kenma rolls his eyes. Stubbornly obstinate is one of his least favourite Tetsurou types. “Lev would have found him three months faster.” 

Tetsurou kisses the crown of Kenma’s head, sounding more tired than Kenma’s ever heard him. “Later, Kenma. Just… give me five more minutes to mope, okay, and then I'll be fine.” 

He's lying. 

They both know it.

They both ignore it.

Five more minutes. 

***

Tooru sits up as soon as the pain vanishes. “We need to go find Hajime.”

“But the department-”

“We need to go find Hajime,” Tooru repeats, fixing Bokuto with a glare. He  _ knows  _ Hajime is in trouble, he knows it, and he knows that if they don’t go  _ now  _ it will be too late. “We need to go find Hajime before it’s two years ago all over again.”

Hinata sniffles on Tobio’s shoulder. 

“But you’re in pain, Oikawa,” Bokuto doesn’t-really-argue. He agrees with Tooru. He’s just presenting the token arguments for the told-you-so moment that’ll come in the near future. 

Tooru pushes himself off the mattress without much difficulty. (He regrets giving Hajime the key. He should have learned from last time, but he hasn’t, and now every wound… every wound inflicted by Hatsu and Hikaru at the least, will hurt. No after-pain, thank God for small miracles.) “I was. Now I’m not. Just… trust me on this one,  _ please,  _ that Hajime is in a lot of danger. They’ve got him. They’ve got him and unless we go  _ now-” _

“We’ll each take a gas station and head to it,” Akaashi interrupts smoothly. He shuts Bokuto up with a hurried  _ look.  _ “There are four close by. Oikawa, come with me in the VW. Hinata, Kageyama, take our car. Kuroo and Kenma can take their bikes and a gas station each.”

“I’ll keep the radio going,” says Bokuto, blood drained from his face.

Tooru nods. 

Even when it feels like the world has ended (only Tooru’s world, only Tooru) of course, the 121-129 has to keep running. It’s never stopped and it never will. “Keep us  updated.” He sounds - to his own ears - remarkably put-together, just shy of being okay. Maybe it’s different to them. 

(It is. To Koutarou, Oikawa is shaking slightly, his cheeks too pink, his eyes too bright, the hair above his right ear matted slightly with dried blood, his voice wobbly. Oikawa is just shy of falling apart.)

“Come on,” says Akaashi to Tooru.

Akaashi has always been calm. It takes a few weeks to get used to the tiny nuances in his voice that tell the difference between anger and happiness, fear and joy.

He’s scared, now.

They all have reason to be a  _ tiny  _ bit worried about seeking out the department.

(Everyone’s been reddened at least once.)

“I’m coming,” says Tooru to Akaashi. 

He takes his backpack. He has a creeping hunch he won’t make it back to the 121-129 again, and he needs the map if he’s going to keep going. 

(Damn map. Damn Miyu. Damn the red key. Damn  _ lies,  _ everywhere Tooru looks, and he can’t get away from them.)

They’re the first to leave. Kuroo and Kenma are just slipping helmets onto their heads when Akaashi kicks the VW into gear. (Hajime mumbles to the cars he drives, Tooru notices. Akaashi doesn’t.)

On the radio, Bokuto has slipped on the Hoot persona like it’s just another mask.  _ “Ford, for all you listeners, has vanished. Not to worry! We have Whisper, Neko, Tomcat, the Prof, Giant, and King out searching. He’ll be found! Anyone ringing in with info, I’ll just answer the call, ‘cause Whisper is out at the moment…” _

“We’ll call in when we find him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we will.”

Tooru keeps his thumb on the dial button, but on the twenty-minute drive to the gas station, nothing comes up to warrant a call in. Hinata is on the line sporadically - trying his hardest to be chirpy - and Bokuto, of course, fills the gaps with an endless stream of increasingly anxious nonsense, but there’s no news from Kuroo, no news from Kenma, and no news from the tango VW. 

Hajime had taken the Ford.

Of course he’d taken the Ford. 

His car. 

Tooru looks out the window and tries not to feel so stupidly guilty, without much success. If he’d told the truth about Miyu, about her being dead, about the keys - 

They all still think he’s in it to find his  _ fucking bitch  _ of a sister, Miyu with her stupid plans and her stupid key and her stupid, stupid rabbits. Hajime thinks so. Tooru knows he shouldn’t have passed it on, dropped it into Hajime’s pocket, but he thought…

He thought the key might be better with someone that didn’t know what it was. Because Miyu...

_ Yeah, right,  _ says a voice that sounds like Makki.  _ You were scared of it. Remember Miyu?  _ **_Remember, Tooru?_ **

Tooru sighs in memory of the gunshot pain. God. He fucked up. He fucked up bad. 

“ _ Oikawa, that’s the car, right? Oikawa! The car!” _

***

A story. 

The kid was headstrong, sure, always needed to be right, sure, but he was nothing compared to his sister. She took her coin, the bronze one with the red centre, and looped it on a silver chain to wear everywhere. She  _ did,  _ too, ‘cause she wore it to bath and to bed and whenever she fed the descendants of Bing and Crisco. 

So, sure the kid is headstrong  _ now,  _ but you all better be damn thankful you never got to meet his sister.

It took her three months to realise what the key did on its own, a week to realise what they did together, and three days to get the name of the man that owned the third one.

Then she got the kid.

They wrote the first letter together, a little eight-year-old and a ten-year-old, neither of them old enough to drive to the third key and neither of them persuasive enough to get someone else to drive them. The old man lived half the country away but he seemed happy enough to get the letter, and he said he knew where there was a place the three could be set together.

That night, the sister took the kid aside, hands gripping thin, gangly wrists, and told him that if either of them went missing, they were to lie. Talk about aliens or kidnappers or something. This is  _ important,  _ kid, so listen!

The kid, mind frozen in fear, fixated on aliens and didn’t let go. 

He never meant for any of this to happen.

The rabbits. It was the rabbits all the time, sister and old man writing letters of cold scientific experiment, the kid pulled along just so that he wouldn’t be forced. One day he woke up late, saw his sister getting them all to walk on hind legs around the garden, and he realised -

They were all  _ mad.  _

She tried it on him, too. First human experiment, she called it. 

You’re all damn lucky the only one you’ve met is the kid. He’s a handful? She was uncontrollable. 

She made him do cartwheels. Then she made him climb the drainpipe, sit on the roof, and left him there until the parents got home and shouted at him, and she pronounced it a success in the letter she wrote every other day to the old man half the way across the country. 

_ Damn  _ lucky you never met her, ‘cause she had this way with her of always getting the kid in trouble, other people in trouble, when the whole damn thing was her fault.

And then it all went to shit when she decided to up in the middle of the night, take fifty rabbits, and go find the concentrator. 

She told the kid. 

He cried for a few hours, then he went and told his parents the rabbits had escaped and he and his sister had been collecting them when big blobby  _ aliens  _ had come out of the sky and abducted her. Aliens, all he could think of, her hands on his wrists telling him  to blame the aliens or something.  Aliens.

He was young. 

She went to find the concentrator, but the kid hid his key and she never found it. She’d been going to use her own key the way it was, without the yellow and without the blue - just the red. 

He never meant to lie.

Aliens… 

After a while he half-believed it himself. 

And he never meant to lie to the gas-store-soft-smile boy,  _ what are you so afraid of,  _ but he did because he didn’t think it mattered and now it was all to late anyway and damn them all to hell for making him do this. 

Damn them all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .............  
>  hhehehheheehhhh  
> tumblr clearfullydearfully to yell at me, twitter clearfullydearful to yell at me. review!!!!!! soz.


	13. everyone freaks out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS ONE IS SHORTER AND IM SORRY BT I JUST HAD TO END IT IT FELT BETTER

Hajime hurts. 

He regrets, too, but mostly he hurts.

“Ask him where it is.”

“He won’t  _ know!”  _

“Ask him, Hikaru, and then we’ll find out what he doesn’t know.”

“I’m telling you, that’s a bad idea. What if Tooru has some way of… getting into his mind? He has the key, remember, he has the key! The blue one! What do we know?”

“Hikaru.”

Hajime’s side hurts, and so does an area on his skull just above his right ear. Memories, nasty memories, flood back to him like a dam in his mind has just broken - he called Hatsu and Hikaru using the post-it,  _ why  _ did he do that, and a dead thing that called itself Hanamaki with brains dripping out its head told him Tooru had lied, and he just had to decide he wanted the truth, didn’t he? Why,  _ why  _ had he been so stupid? It was like a fog had descended over his brain, made him stupid, made him - 

He got  _ shot.  _

“Hatsu, do you think he knows where  _ Tooru  _ is going? Tooru has the map, still, and we need the map to get to the body. Damn girl made it so there wasn’t any other way.”

“If he doesn’t, I’m sure we can jog his memory a little. He’s bound to have seen the map. Takaki?”

Something hits Hajime’s side, the side that gets shot, and he can’t help the little whine that slips out between his gritted teeth. 

“He’s awake,” reports Takaki, the suit. The butt of his Beretta waves in Hajime’s blurred half-vision. “You don’t answer, that happens. Yeah?” As though to confirm he means business, he prods Hajime again with the gun, and Hajime grunts, clutching his abdomen. God, it hurts.

“Good,” says Hatsu. She sounds pleased. 

Beneath them, something purrs, and -

Hajime realises that he’s in the back of a long, black car. The sort of car the boss uses in the gangster films, except the two masterminds are driving and the hired muscle is the one reclining on the backseat. Hajime is lying on the ground, the black fabric ground, and a tiny part of his brain thinks the thought:  _ I’m on the black bit so they don’t have to wipe the stains off afterwards.  _

Weird. He hurts - he hurts everywhere - but he can still  _ think  _ through the whiteness of pain. 

With every heartbeat it hurts a little more, like waves crashing and ebbing on a beach in strong wind. 

“You awake?” Takaki kicks him. Hip, this time, just shy of the part of Hajime that’s dripping onto the floor, but close enough to send Hajime curling into a tiny ball. Make the pain smaller. “Yeah. You’re awake.”

“SuperStore guy,” says Hikaru languidly. “SuperStore friend! Where’s Tooru headed, huh?”

“To find his sister,” Hajime chokes. That’s vague enough, isn’t it? Tooru told him himself, the department hadn’t seen the map and they needed it to work out where Miyu would be. So really, Hajime is saving his own hide  _ and  _ Tooru’s. 

He’s such an idiot. 

Takaki’s toe prods his hip again. “Don’t be obtuse.”

_ Obtuse is an obscure word for a muscle,  _ Hajime’s brain thinks fuzzily through another crashing wave of whiteness.  _ Hah. Obtuse. Meaning big, or, or… or obstinate. Am I being obstinate? I hope so. I should be obstinate. Obstinate… awkward. I need to be awkward until Tooru gets to me.  _ And there’s a thought. Hajime doesn’t know if Tooru even knows he’s gone, nevermind how he’ll find him again. 

Something hard and painful is sticking into him. In his back pocket. A forgotten paperclip, or a pin, or… something. 

“Where  _ geographically  _ is Tooru headed, huh?” Hikaru asks. “Don’t fuck around, man, we don’t want to hurt you.”

All evidence points in the contrary of his statement, but Hajime’s throat feels like it’s on fire. He’s not sure he could choke the words out, so he doesn’t. 

“Come  _ on.”  _

“Dunno.” 

Untrue; Hajime can see the map in his mind’s eye as it was this morning, when Tooru got the information from Yaku and Lev and drew the final line across the convergence point. Leylines. Miyu. Crashed spaceships. It’s all there in his head.

But-

“Iwaizumi Hajime, please tell us where Tooru is going. We believe he’s going to try and find a key that could mean disaster for quite a lot of people,” Hatsu says with incredible calm considering there’s someone bleeding out not two feet away from her. “It’s important.”

“He’s finding Miyu,” Hajime says, then giggles, because  _ Finding Miyu  _ sounds like  _ Finding Nemo  _ and he wonders whether Tooru would be Marlin or Dory. “P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.”

“He’s going to  _ Sydney?!”  _ The car turns and Hatsu hisses. “What?”

Hikaru snorts. “Don’t be an idiot. It’s a film reference. If you’d just work more on the socials-”

“So he’s not going to Sydney.”

Hajime shakes his head when Takaki waves the Beretta threateningly again. This is stupid. He’s not in a mafia film. 

He wants to go  _ home.  _

(And then he realises he’s thinking about the veranda at the clinic, sweet smell of peaches and cigarette smoke,  _ what are you so afraid of?  _ And he stops.) “I don’t know where he’s going. He never told me.”

Hikaru scoffs. “That’s bullshit, man, even Takaki could see through it. He never showed you the map? He never showed you the little… I don’t know, what did the old man do? The lines. I forget…”

“We should have used it. We should have filled it in ourselves,” says Hatsu in a dire undertone, and Hajime gets the feeling that he is reading from a different script to everybody else. It’s not a great feeling. It just kind of confirms what he felt like he knew - Tooru lied, even if it  _ was  _ just a little, and he lied about something and now Hajime’s been swept off the board into a totally different game.

His side hurts.

He wants to go home. 

_ What are you so afraid of  _

“You should use it. Or I can use Right Red Eye.”

“Not when I’m driving. And you can’t do it in the car.”

“Let me drive!”

“Hikaru, you always drive too fast.”

“Let Takaki drive!” 

“No. I’ll use it when we stop next, if Right Red Eye doesn’t work.”

“Ugh.”

“What?”

Hikaru’s hand snakes around the back of his chair and he knocks his knuckles gently against the spot above Hajime’s ear, his fingers coming away bloody. Hajime winces, groans, shorting out again with the pain. It fucking  _ hurts.  _ Hikaru sounds disgusted when he next speaks. “You sure he’ll live ‘till then?”

“He will,” Takaki rumbles, prodding Hajime’s leg with his toe. “I promise.”

Hikaru makes a satisfied little huffing noise. “Fine then, I suppose. So long as I use Right Red Eye before you use…  _ it.  _ It gives me the creeps.”

“Does it?” Hatsu asks. She sounds like she’s smiling.

And then they go over a bump, or a pothole, or something, and Hajime’s head thuds against the metal bar across the glovebox, and everything is white and black and there’s a dull roaring in his ears that fades out to nothing. Blessed nothing. 

***

Akaashi is on the phone to the 121-129, describing blood on the asphalt and the red Ford Focus, the driver’s door open, the keys on the ground. He keeps shooting glances at Tooru, like Tooru can’t tell, like Tooru isn’t going to  _ see.  _

He knows about the suicide watch. 

Slowly, he puts the three cans of gasoline in the back seat of the Ford.

Akaashi’s head snaps around. What does he think Tooru is going to do, drink it?

They’re all assholes if they think he doesn’t know. 

_ “- Blood everywhere, like he’s been shot-”  _

Tooru knows it’s his fault. He still feels the vestiges of the bullet in his side. 

_ “- Must be them. He’s okay, for now-” _

Pulling on the straps of his backpack, Tooru knows he doesn’t have to make a decision. He  _ knew  _ there was a reason he’d need this. “Hey, Akaashi,” he calls, proud of the steadiness of his voice, “Please…  _ please  _ check ‘round the other side. I know - I know he won’t be there…” He lets himself crack a little. More believable. Because while he  _ is  _ falling apart, this won’t be a popular move.

Akaashi gives him a look.  _ (Hey, Tooru. He’s thinking about what he’d be like if Bokuto went missing. He’s pitying you. That’s the only reason he’s going to do it.)  _ “Okay, Oikawa,” he says slowly. “Just… don’t move.”

Tooru sniffs. He feels the pressure of actual tears building up behind his eyes, but he refuses to let them spill. “I won’t.”

Nodding once, Akaashi strides around the gas station, which looks pretty much abandoned. No other cars here, save the Ford. 

Well.

Tooru waits until Akaashi is definitely out of sight before he snatches the keys from the ground, dumps his backpack into the passenger side, and jumps into the driver’s seat. Thank God for small miracles - it starts as soon as he turns the key in the ignition, even as he sees Akaashi running back towards him - “Tooru! What the fuck are you doing!”

“Tell Tobio I’m sorry! And apologise to Shou, too!” Tooru yells out the window. He’s crying, he notices, but in a third-person sort of way. The tears taste salty. “Apologise to them all!”

“Tooru-”

He accelerates, remembering a different gas station in the Ford, Hajime beside him swearing himself blue, and his vision blurs and his throat chokes as he drives onto the main road. He  _ is  _ sorry. He’s doing the best he can to fix it. 

He’s got to fix it. 

_ Fix it.  _

(It’s ‘cause you lied, Tooru, you lied about the aliens ‘cause Miyu told you to, and you always do what Miyu says, don’t you?  _ Don’t you?  _ **_What are you so afraid of?)_ **

The car smells of Hajime; something earthy mixed with a hint of citrus. The tang of copper blood is in the air too, stinging Tooru’s conscience, but he ignores it. He needs to drive. Keep driving. He  _ knows  _ where they’re going. 

They’re going to where Miyu is.

(Miyu’s body, Tooru! Miyu’s dead!  _ Who killed Oikawa Miyu?)  _

They’re going to where Miyu is. And right now? Tooru doesn’t give a single flying  _ fuck  _ about Miyu, about finding her at all. (About finding the key no don’t think about the key you’re finding your  _ sister, remember?)  _ He doesn’t care. They have Hajime! There’s no hope for everyone in the 121-129, they’re all fucked anyway, but Hajime is just a victim of circumstance. 

This is Tooru’s fault, so he’s going to fix it. 

He hopes as he’s driving that he can get the same enjoyment out of it, the same hypnotic sort of trance, that Hajime can. When Hajime is driving, even when he’s driving the godawful Volkswagen, he zones out, and if Tooru turns his head to talk to him it takes him a few tries to snap Hajime out of whatever he’s thinking about.

Tooru learned to drive late. Takaki’s predecessor, or possibly the one before him, taught him when they were giving him the job to get the kid that sees ghosts to stop.

That was Tobio. 

So long ago. 

He learned to drive late - around sixteen, maybe - but Hajime’s been driving since he was born, according to him. 

Tooru swerves into the fast lane, a brown Volvo hooting angrily at him. He hoots back.

If he remembers the map correctly… He’ll check in an hour or so, maybe, but he thinks the concentrator (Miyu) the concentrator is near the cliffs up at the place Ukai and Takeda used to live before Hatsu and Hikaru drove them away. Yeah. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? The convergence point of the leylines was roughly there,  _ roughly,  _ and if everything else in this whole situation is symbolically charged, why not the concentrator? 

(miyu)

(forget it!)

Fuck Miyu’s stupid key, and fuck the old man’s stupid letters, and fuck tiny baby Tooru lying through his teeth because of the  _ fucking rabbits.  _

Tooru is going to get Hajime, and then they’re going to go home. (wheres home tooru wheres home?) They’re going to go  _ home,  _ wherever that is, the clinic or the radio station or just an apartment near Shou and Tobio, and then… Tooru will explain it all. He’ll tell Hajime, he really will, instead of just skirting around it the whole time. 

Tell him about the rabbits and Miyu and finding Miyu and the keys and the old man and why he lied and Miyu and the concentrator and Miyu and the keys and the twins and Miyu. Mostly Miyu. 

Miyu deserves to be avenged even if she did what she did. 

_ Even if she did what she died for even if she died for what she did _

Tooru tastes blood, and realises he’s bitten through the tip of his tongue. 

On the radio, Akaashi is crying.

Tooru winces - “I couldn't stop him, Koutarou, I swear I tried! He's  _ gone!” -  _ but he doesn't turn the volume down. He has to know what they're doing, or that's what he tells himself, but there's a tiny part of him that knows he's doing this because it  _ hurts  _ and the hurt… it's not that he enjoys it, spikes of emotion straight to the heart, but he knows he deserves it.

He feels like such a fucking idiot. 

He’s done this before!

Tooru you  _ fucking idiot  _

He’s done this before!

He’s done this before and Makki  _ died,  _ although Makki had been texting Hatsu and would have killed Shouyou  _ anyway,  _ but Tooru will lie awake at night, lies awake at night, wondering if some part of him lent Makki that button-down on purpose, just so he’d die.

(No, why would he do that? Why?)

The Volvo that he overtook zooms past him again, hooting victoriously. Tooru frowns at it.

He  _ didn’t  _ do that - at least, not consciously. But he will admit that Makki looks like him in the half-light of sunset, fog around his body, obscuring his features, and then: 

It only took one shot. 

One shot. 

There was blood on the asphalt next to the open door of the Ford. 

_ No.  _ Not happening, not happening, not today. Not at all. Tooru is  _ not  _ going to let that happen again, he’s going to stop it, it’s  _ all his fault  _ but he didn’t mean for it to be, and he thought… he thought that maybe, that maybe,  _ maybe  _ if it was different this time, maybe Hajime wouldn’t turn out how Makki did - 

The keys, after all, had-

For a little while, at least-

He and Miyu had been able to tell what each other were thinking, and they’d been closer. (For a little while, at least.) And Tooru had never thought this would end with  _ Hajime  _ being the one caught up in the very centre of it all. He imagined himself - dead, maybe, maybe alive - and he imagined finding Miyu using the map. On his own. With the luxury of time. He imagined finding her (her body) her and the concentrator and then

then

Then? 

Using them, using them like Miyu wanted to, two keys and concentrator? But the rabbits… thinking of the rabbits. Of the rabbits. 

Tooru’s hands tighten on the wheel as he skips past the Volvo again. 

Of the rabbits. No - they were  _ dying,  _ no matter what Miyu said. Says. Said. No. Tooru set out to use the concentrator and the keys, find Miyu,  _ find Miyu, find my sister!  _ But now he thinks…

If they’re near Watchton. Near Watchton and he’ll toss the whole fucking thing into the ocean, grab Hajime, and  _ run.  _

Near Watchton. 

And Tooru knows they’ll be near Watchton, because every time Tooru gets a sneaking, creeping feeling, a wish that something won’t be, it always is. 

The Volvo overtakes him again.

He lets it accelerate into the horizon, and takes the second exit for the town the last of the Old Guard live in. 

***

They call it Watchton because it’s by the coast, but not sunny coasts like Florida, not beachy coasts like Normandy, not  _ any  _ coast  _ anywhere  _ where someone would like to visit. It’s by the coastline, jagged cliffs sticking into the sea, houses perched on top of them like sad birds trying to roost,  and they call it Watchton because you have to Watch your step in Town or your next footfall could send you down to the icy depths. 

Exaggeration, of course.

Watchton is half a mile from the cliffs. The only building sitting precariously on a cliff-edge is a small white cottage. Currently, the little black car that spends its life chugging from Watchton to the cottage and back is in Watchton, parked outside the general store. 

Inside the general store is a man. 

His name is Ukai Keishin. 

He is broad-shouldered and tall, lanky, the stub of a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth as he turns the pages of a pulp novel. His boots are up on the counter, next to a half-smoked pack of cigarettes and an orange lighter. His hair is blonde at the tips fading to dark brown, bunched back by a worn black band, an old pencil shoved behind his ear.

He is thirty-five years old. He is one of the oldest people left from the Department of Investigative Abnormalities. 

He isn’t listening to the 121-129, although it’s on in the background; he’s too engrossed in the pulp. (He will regret that in about a minute’s time.)

(Old Nekomata named it the Hundred Twenty, of course, but when those new kids showed up and Takeda decided to move, Ukai gave the name over to the kids.)

One-two-one-one-two-nine. Ukai likes it, he supposes, but sometimes he wishes he and Takeda still ran the radio. 

Eh. The store is good, too. 

Which is when his minute is up and Takeda barrels through the door - Takeda, hair just beginning to show streaks of silver, a look of urgency on his normally-bemused face - and the bell above the door falls off the hook. “Keishin!”

“Ittetsu?”

Ukai looks around quickly, making sure none of the residents of Watchton are in the store before he leaps the counter and closes the door, shoving the doorstop in front of it and flipping the closed sign to prevent anyone else from coming in. Takeda looks  _ ruined,  _ as though he’s ran all the way from their house, which he has. Ukai is using the car today. “Keishin, turn up the radio!”

He leans over and complies. Takeda bends out of the way of his arm, still breathing heavily, glasses slid down his nose, a small patch of damp sweat at his collar. “Keishin, it’s happening again.”

“Jesus fuck,” Ukai mumbles as the kid that replaced him starts half-sobbing through the store. 

_ “O-okay, update, update from Aka-Whisper, update… U-um, Ford is gone, there’s blood next to his car, b-blood, so we assume for the moment he’s been s-shot, and now the P-prof has taken the car and gone. G-gone. Right?” _

_ “Right,”  _ and that’s the voice of the other kid. The one that kind-of replaced Takeda. Ukai stares in horror at his little, broken radio, his hand on Takeda’s arm, waves of cold cold horror washing over him, drowning him. 

It’s happening again. 

Again!

“They’re going to come here,” whispers Takeda, and although he’s five years Ukai’s senior, Ukai always gets the feeling of accidental fragility, of one foot in another dreamland. A person like that doesn’t suit situations like this. “Keishin, they’re going to come here, just like Miyu did.”

“I know.” Ukai swallows. 

“Keishin.”

“I’ll dig the guns out of the garage.”

***

And that is one story.

Here is another.

***

Kenma is an only child. 

No, he’s not, but often he feels as though he is. Felt. Past tense. He doesn’t have that family anymore.

“Tetsurou.”

“He’s going to be here somewhere!”

“Tetsurou.”

“I can find him!”

“Tetsurou.”

_ “I can’t let this happen again!”  _

Kenma hangs up on him and drives past Tetsurou’s bike, skidding sideways in the thin dirt track, effectively stopping him in his tracks. His face is hidden behind the helmet, but one thing Kenma has always appreciated about Tetsurou is how open he is with his body language. Now: shoulders slumped, head bowed, gloved hands trembling when he lifts them to his face.

Dejection. 

Kenma kicks out the support prop of his bike and walks over to Tetsurou.

“Tetsurou, I heard on the 121-129-”

“Fuck them! They don’t know Hajime like I do!”

Kenma resists the urge to point out that, since Hajime and Tetsurou parted ways  _ eight years ago,  _ Tetsurou hardly knows Hajime any better than anybody else in the 121-129 does. He sighs, instead, putting his hand on Tetsurou’s arm. “Let’s work  _ with  _ them, not against them. We are a part of them.”

“And that’s the reason he’s fucking-”

“Tetsurou-”

“Just fucking  _ listen!”  _

And okay, it’s probably because he’s stressed out, because he’s got too much on his plate, because of anything and everything all at once, because Tetsurou wouldn’t ever ever, but Kenma flinches back so hard he trips against his bike, the support giving way, both he and the motorcycle falling backwards into the grassy ditch.

(Bike won’t be hurt.)

(Kenma is such an idiot.)

Fuck. 

“Kenma?”

“Just go and fucking  _ find  _ Hajime then,” spits Kenma, venomously by his own standards. He’s angry at himself more than Tetsurou, who is a  _ person,  _ who shouldn’t be expected to be perfect the whole time, but now his arm is trapped under his bike and he’s not completely sure he’s able to get it out.

And it hurts.

And -

“Kenma?”

“Go get Hajime! You want to, don’t you? Go do it then.” Kenma thinks he might cry, which is stupid, because all that’s happened is that Tetsurou’s yelled at him a tiny bit and he’s freaked out and now he feels like two wet thumbs are trying to push his eyeballs out from the inside. “ _ Fuck. _ ”

Tetsurou jumps down into the ditch, boots thudding near Kenma’s head. Loud. Very loud. Kenma winces. 

Under the bike, something in his arm twinges warningly.

“Kenma, I’m sorry.”

“Lift the bike off,” Kenma mumbles. 

***

That was a story about stress, and how much one person can do when they go missing. That was a story about just how far down the fucked-up goes in kids way too young to have it.

***

_ It’s all starting to fall apart, isn’t it? You began and you thought this would be a nice journey, a happy story about coming-of-age and about finding love and about road trips down sunlit roads, eating cheap food from roadside cafes, finding friends and dating and living your best life today.  _

_ At the beginning it was. It was lovely, wasn’t it? _

_ Yeah. Yeah, it was nice. Long, meandering conversations, hands held in the darkness, giggles as they eat food over the breakfast table, and even though - even though!!! - it was sad, plenty sad, you could see the light at the end of the tunnel, the happy ending shaping itself into something tangible, possible, something  _ **_real._ **

_ None of this was meant to happen.  _

_ None of it. _

_ And the tears are dripping down the radio host’s face as he desperately tries to remember the code names of his friends, and the tears are leaking from the corners of the boy’s eyes as he thinks about just how much of this is his own fault, and the tears are pushing themselves down the biker’s cheeks because everything reminds him of what he tried so hard to forget, and everything hurts far too much.  _

_ Everything hurts. Everything. Like a wound, reopened after it has long sealed, dripping lifeblood down your sleeve. _

_ The boy in the red Ford wipes his eyes with his left hand, and gets a streak of blood on his cheek.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhhhhaaaaaaahhhhh shit got real and its gon get realer hell to the yeAH
> 
> review plz thank you xx


	14. you killed him (you killed the rabbit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK SO HOPEFULLY THIS ACTUALLY BEGINS TO EXPLAIN SOME THINGS   
> after like 80k lmao  
> BUT WHO CAAAARES   
> THANK

Tooru drives for three hours, not stopping even when his stomach growls angrily at him, not stopping even when every swallow feels like somebody is rubbing sandpaper over the back of his throat. When he  _ does  _ stop, it’s to refill the gas tank, to eat the melted chocolate bar he finds in the glovebox, and to confirm his suspicions of the destination. 

Yeah. Not  _ exactly  _ Watchton, but close enough that Tooru could drop into the Old Guard for a tea and a chat.

(Hah.  In his dreams. He doesn't have this luxury.)

Watchton. 

He’s long left the main roads, abandoning them for narrow country lanes that go for miles without Tooru seeing a house or another car. He kind of enjoys the peace, for the first half-hour, as much as he can when he’s been breaking the speed limit since he started, but then he thinks about the gaps in his conversation that should be filled by somebody sitting beside him and the silence begins to oppress, not to free him. 

And on the 121-129, one by one, the first search parties are dropping off the radar to be replaced by Yaku and Lev, Nishinoya and Asahi, and the third - surprisingly - Wakatoshi and Tendou. The clinic calls in, Daichi informing them all that Ennoshita has been injured and they can’t lend anymore hands, sounding apologetic and vaguely frantic. Up too long again. Tooru hopes someone will tell Suga to  _ go to bed  _ soon. 

Apparently, Kenma has broken his wrist and  _ Prof, if you’re listening, there’s a situation zero,  _ which means somebody has had the mother of all panic attacks. 

The words  _ this is all your fault  _ don’t need to be said - they lie like vipers underneath Bokuto’s words just waiting to snap at Tooru when he turns the radio on. 

He drives faster.

Cries a bit. 

Like a checklist, he thinks, just a tickbox of driving and crying and regretting in a cycle that’ll never ever stop until he finds Hajime and ends Miyu once and for all - forget  _ finding  _ her, forget that - and drops the keys and the concentrator and the whole damn department into the ocean. 

Off the cliff.

Yeah. 

Yeah, that sounds good. That sounds  _ really  _ good. 

_ “... Has anybody seen King and Giant? I r-repeat, has anybody seen King and Giant? They went out two hours ago but we called, we called them and they’re not picking up, they’re in my car, me and Keij- and Whisper’s car, they’ll be following the Prof and Ford, and Whisper still isn’t back… Anybody. Anybody free? Come and help. I’ll text every one of you the location of the place they were last seen… Prof, Ford, King, and Giant. Help us look…”  _

Tooru curses under his breath. Tobio - damned Tobio! Tobio has taken to him, always did. At that foster home he recognised Tooru as somebody that wouldn’t dismiss him as crazy, so he adopted him as some sort of older-brother figure. And Shouyou! Shouyou seems to  _ adore  _ Hajime, Iwaizumi, seeing him as something… Fuck, Tooru doesn’t know. 

They’re following him. He knows they are. And if there’s one thing he doesn’t want, it’s for them to get involved… they’re too young.  _ Too young.  _ Too innocent for all the guilt they already carry.

God. He’s  _ fucked up.  _

When he meets a post van, the shock of another person actually existing in the world is so amazing that he brakes abruptly, the back wheels kicking into the ditch, spinning mud into the air. The postman behind the wheel leans on his horn, staring angrily out the window, and flips Tooru off to swerve around the Ford.

“Sorry!” Tooru yells, unheard. The middle finger waving out the window chases him out of the ditch and back down the country lanes, slower, but with no less urgency.

After all, Hatsu and Hikaru have… an hour? Two hours? Only a small advantage, considering all they have is Hajime and all Hajime has is the map and all the map has is an area of about two miles square to search and

how they’re going to get the information from hajime, tooru, how?

handcuffs to a desk and stick and the carrot, tooru, those kids still living are the carrot and really is this much of a stick tooru hey tooru here’s lunch on this table can you reach it can you reach it can you reach it? no? whoooops

Tooru grips the wheel so tightly that his bitten nails, abused beyond their limits, begin to tear away from his fingertips. When he lifts his left hand, the cuts around his wrist still oozing red marks into his sleeve, there are lines of blood across the tips of his fingers where the short stumps of nail have begun to peel.

Tooru feels like he’s falling apart at the seams. Pieces of him dripping outside his body. Will he be in one piece when he reaches Watchton? 

(he thinks of makki dripping brains down one side, picking the grey goop up with his soil-blackened hands and shoving it back into the skull, falling apart and putting himself together as best he can)

(will tooru be like that?)

(tooru cant be like that)

He forces his grip to loosen as the yellow brightness of noon sinks slightly into the old age of early evening, The sun is before him, meaning he has to squint to see where he’s driving, and questing right hand into the glovebox finds no sunglasses.

On the 121-129, Bokuto’s voice abruptly stops. There’s silence for maybe thirty seconds before Akaashi replaces him, voice shaking: “ _ H-hoot is going for a b-break, so I’ll be here for a while- Kuroo! Kuroo, watch for Kenma, I mean… Tom… oh, fuck it, just go get him- _ ”

(Of course, Kenma. He’s strong as diamond but brittle as glass, and if he’s broken his wrist, if something’s happened, it’ll send him spiralling back into  _ all that shit  _ again.)

(All your fault.)

(All your fault, Tooru.)

(It’s all your fault Tooru, go get the food, what’s that behind you is it makki is it him whats this in front of you oh a key wouldnt you like that aha)

He’s bleeding, listening to Akaashi trying not to have a panic attack live on air, hearing the names of people searching for him  _ and Tobio and Shouyou  _ **_and Hajime_ ** and he feels so terribly awful about what he’s done. What Miyu begun. 

It’s Miyu’s fault, okay, and all that Tooru’s done is gotten caught up in it all. 

(yeah tell yourself that tooru if it makes you feel better does it???? does it really????)

He drives into the burning sun as it falls into the oncoming ocean, watching the road signs count the miles to Watchton until suddenly the numbers have fallen to nine, eight, seven, and the ocean is so close Tooru can taste it on the air and he suddenly realises that he doesn’t know what to do.

He feels like he felt that night. 

Abandoned, and cold, and so desperately  _ desperately  _ alone. 

***

“Go and get Crisco.”

Tooru jumped. He’d been drawing himself and his key, his key with a beaming smiley face and a waving hand. “Crisco? Miyu, he died two days ago, remember? He was the one you buried in the forest.”

“Aha!” Miyu, who was a small girl with two plaits trailing down her back and a self-confident smile on her pretty features, pointed a finger at her smaller brother. “That’s where you’re  _ wrong.  _ I was using the key, just to see if it would work, and it did! It worked!”

“But I felt him! Rabbits shake when their hearts beat, and his wasn’t beating!” Tooru stared down at his hands, which were still covered in dirt from the grave for the old rabbit he’d dug himself. Miyu didn’t seem to care, but Tooru did, and he’s dug every single grave so far for the eleven rabbits that have died during the… 

Experimentation.

Tooru loved Crisco. Crisco was a fluffy rabbit with white ears that flopped over his eyes when he hopped around, and Miyu…

Point is, the rabbit was dead.

Miyu grinned happily, taking a fresh sheet of paper from the pile and starting to draw her own red key. She was better at art than Tooru, taking it as a class in school, and she shaped hers with care and simplicity. The real thing hung from the silver chain around her neck. 

Tooru hid his in his wallet among the pennies, just to disguise it. He didn’t like to flaunt them, no matter what Miyu said, no matter what the man in the letters said. 

“That’s where you’re wrong, Tooru.”

“Oh,” Tooru squeaked. The blue crayon snapped at the tip and rolled off the table - he stared at it sadly as it rolled under the cabinet, gone forever. “Wait, but… but Miyu, I buried him!”

“I know you did, that’s why I did it,” Miyu said matter-of-factly. She chewed a wad of raspberry bubblegum, popping it loudly and giggling when it stuck to her nose. “It was an interesting experiment. Mr. Yana told me about it.”

“Mr. Yana tells you a lot of things,” Tooru mumbled, glaring at the stack of letters they’d received from Hinata Yana. Miyu wrote two copies of every letter they send, keeping one for their own records and one to post to Yana, and Tooru wondered if Yana does the same. “Are you sure he told you that one?” Tooru only asked because last week Miyu told him to snap Hoppy’s neck, telling him Mr. Yana said it was a good idea, but he read through the letters and it had been  _ Miyu  _ who suggested it.

A lot of things scared Tooru. 

“Mr. Yana and I have a working relationship built on a mutual interest in the keys, Tooru,” sighed Miyu condescendingly. “I wish you’d just listen to us and take this a bit more seriously.” 

“But Crisco died,” Tooru mumbled. “I know he did.”

Miyu tapped the red stone at the centre of her key. “I simply slowed his heart enough to fool you, although that wasn’t hard. You’re an idiot. But if you buried him, then I suppose he’s dead now  _ anyway.  _ You killed Crisco, then, Tooru.”

Tooru stared at her, his stomach dropped out of his insides. He felt awful. “I… I killed Crisco?” 

“If you  _ buried the poor thing alive,  _ then, yes. You killed Crisco. My first rabbit, Tooru, my first…” Miyu shook her head sorrowfully, blending brown and yellow crayons together to make the burnished bronze colour of her key. 

Tooru bent his head so that she wouldn’t see the tears dribbling down the end of his nose. Miyu hated it when he cried. She always got embarrassed and told him to stop being such a baby, even though he couldn’t help it, even though he  _ tried…  _

He killed Crisco. He used to let Crisco sleep in his bed. 

He felt too hot, like the ghost of all the rabbits he’s killed, some amalgamation of all those little bunnies with heads coming out of its arms, that thing would ooze through the door of their cubby house and break all his crayons like Santa did one year and it’ll say, 

It’ll say, 

_ Tooru you killed us you bad boy you baby!  _

Tooru sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve. He wanted the blue crayon back to finish his picture, but if he got up Miyu would ask him to get Crisco’s body or something, and he didn’t want to go gravedigging. If he drew attention to himself Miyu would ask.

So he couldn’t.

He sat and kicked his heels together. “W-what should we do today, then?”

“I’m going to write a letter to Mr. Yana soon, and then we’ll try the mass-mind again,” Miyu said. No argument. “I want to be able to do it without this concentrator Mr. Yana talks about.”

“Concentrator?” Tooru ventured curiously, sure his query would be shot down by another huffy remark from Miyu or something.

Miyu nodded, brisk and sharp, unwrapping the red wax crayon from its paper to rub it over the background of her drawing. “Mr. Yana told me about it. Apparently  _ his  _ key told him about it, ‘cause he’s had his for longer than us. The concentrator is meant to be this thing that will combine the powers of two or all three keys, making it into one massive key, or something, I forget the details. Point is, if we can do what we do with just one key, what could we do with a concentrator?”

“But… but why do we need it?” Tooru asked. He felt for his wallet in his back pocket, just to make sure it was still there. 

With a scoffing noise, Miyu tossed her plaits over her shoulders. “For God’s sake, Tooru, even you should understand that. Imagine it! Not just stupid rabbits, but people!”

Tooru didn’t reply, but he shuddered. He remembered Miyu holding both keys, one in each hand, making him jump out the bedroom window just to see if the mind control would stretch to the humans as well as the small brains of their rabbit kingdom, and he remembered the intense pain in his ankle as he twisted it that finally snapped him out of the mind-controlled haze. 

So with this concentrator…

Miyu and Mr. Yana (and him, he supposed) would be able to do what they did to the rabbits, hordes of them under their control with just one key, to crowds of  _ people?  _

“It sounds a bit wrong,” he said timidly. Miyu’s ire was ferocious when he annoyed her. “Are you sure we’re allowed to do it?”

“Of course we are,” she snapped, throwing the crayon in his direction. It bounced off his head and rolled under the cabinet to join the snapped half of blue crayon. “Now look what you made me do! Go get it, and remember this - if Mr. Yana and I were trusted enough to have the keys, then obviously we were meant to use them too!”

Tooru noticed how she didn’t say his name.  _ I have a key too,  _ he didn’t say, getting up from his chair and onto his hands and knees so he could look under the cabinet. He felt bad about the crayon, and he was still a little drippy from the knowledge that he killed Crisco, so he ended up curled on the floor peering under the cabinet and crying quietly into his knees.

He did that a lot. Somehow, it was how their cubby house meetings almost always ended. 

Miyu scoffed. “Stop being such a baby and  _ get up,  _ Tooru! Go get my crayon!”

He felt her hands take the wallet from his back pocket at the same time as his scrabbling fingers caught purchase on a rounded crack of crayon. The blue one. She was going to use his key again, but Tooru didn’t care anymore - Miyu had already used his key far too often for him to be annoyed that she was stealing something of his. If it even is his anymore. “Remember the plan?” She asked, as she did every time she went into the woods with a pack of rabbits.

Tooru nodded. He emerged, clutching a crayon, and recited: “ _ The keys are not to be mentioned. The keyes might be alien - the keys might not. The keys are not to be mentioned. Lie and say aliens and nobody will believe you.” _

Miyu patted him on the head condescendingly. “Good boy, Tooru.”

When he was sure she was gone, he cried a little more, but not much, because big boys don’t cry no matter how much they want to. 

***

_ “Is that Kageyama-kun?”  _

Tobio looks down at Shouyou, who has thumbed the speakerphone and now holds the device between them, looking solemn. He slows down a little, keeping well over the limit, but slow enough that he can divert some of his attention to the phone.

His heart is beating too fast. “This is Kageyama. Who is this?” He looks at Shouyou, raising an eyebrow, but Shouyou just shakes his head. 

_ “Oh, thank God! Tobio! Keishin, come here, I’ve got him!” _

“T-takeda? Is that you?” Tobio stammers, shocked. It’s the last person he thought would be calling.

Shouyou’s mouth drops. “Takeda? Ukai? The Old- What’s wrong? Are you okay? I-”

Tobio changes gear and uses his free hand to stroke down Shouyou’s palm, all the comfort he can give. He thinks his voice should be shakier when he replies: “Is it to do with Oikawa and Iwaizumi, right? And the department. It’s them.”

_ “It’s them. We can’t get ahold of Oikawa,”  _ and that’s Ukai, Coach as he used to be called in the three weeks Tobio was in the 121-129 before Bokuto took over the radio broadcasts.  _ “We called. Do you know Oikawa’s number, or the number of the phone he’s likely to have? We need to talk to him. Where are you now?” _

Shouyou puts his hand on Tobio’s, which rests on the gearstick, and rattles off the numbers of Oikawa’s phone and the phone Iwaizumi had been using. He sounds scared, more than Tobio, but he’s always been worse at controlling his emotions. “We’re going after them, Coach, we’re going after them. It’s us - I mean, if you give us-”

_ “Fuck, Shouyou!”  _

“We need to,” Shouyou protests, holding the phone closer to Tobio. “We need to!”

_ “Damn, this is about Oikawa’s sister, that Miyu girl, we need to talk to him right now! Don’t-”  _

“We’re already on our way, Coach,” says Tobio firmly. “I - what do you mean, Miyu? What do you know about that? That’s who he’s looking for!”

_ “Looking for? Why would Oikawa be looking for her? Doesn’t he know - Keishin, come here, apparently Oikawa is looking for Miyu-”  _

_ “That doesn’t make sense-”  _

“What do you mean?” Tobio bites out, one hand tight on the wheel, the other shaking under Shouyou’s. He’s sick of this whole conspiracy, this constant dodge and duck to find out what is true and what isn’t. Everyone seems to have one piece of the puzzle, but they’re all missing a corner piece and the only parts built are the pieces of identical, baffling sky, and… And Tobio  _ hates  _ jigsaw puzzles.

_ “I mean she died. Years ago. On our couch, as a matter of fact, and I’m sure Oikawa knows that. So why is he looking for her? Is there something else?” _

“We didn’t know. He told us the map… the map was to find Miyu. He told us she’d been  _ taken by aliens  _ when he was a kid. He… are you sure?” Shouyou holds the phone with white knuckles, his bottom lip wobbling alarmingly. “He couldn’t have lied. Our apartment blew up!”

Tobio knows this is a dangerous route to go down, even if Shouyou isn’t willing to admit it. They both… 

_ “Hello, kiddo,” says the boy in front of him, his hair swooped perfectly over his eyes, his smile wide and, while mocking, somehow Tobio knows the boy is making fun of the carer, not him. “How’re you?” _

_ “Answer the man, Tobio,” snaps the carer. She whaps the back of his head with the flat of her palm, sending Tobio staggering into the boy in front of him - this is before Tobio’s growth spurt, so he only comes up to the boy’s chest, and as soon as he realises what he’s done he jumps backwards with one hand over his mouth. “Tobio!” She says again. “Answer!” _

_ “H-hi,” Tobio stammers. His cheeks burn bright red. His head stings.  _

_ The carer behind him makes a harrumphing noise, sounding like a disgruntled elephant. “Tobio-” _

_ “Actually, miss, if it’s okay I’d like to speak to him alone for a while,” says the boy. He smiles at her, and Tobio wonders if she can see the joke dancing around the corners of the boy’s mouth like he can. He’s making fun of her, Tobio thinks - he hopes - but God, what if he’s making fun of Tobio instead? What if Tobio is just another stupid kid in his eyes? _

_ “I see ghosts, and I don’t care if you think I’m mad, because they all do anyway,” he says defiantly as soon as the carer leaves.  _

_ The boy hands him a red chew, like a vitamin pill. “It’s kiddie-painkiller. She whacked you pretty hard. I believe you kiddo, trust me.” _

They both…

Have their reasons for idolising Oikawa Tooru, and Tobio isn’t sure he wants to knock him from the pedestal he’s been set atop in Tobio’s head. “What do you mean?” He repeats, quieter, noticing how the phone shakes in Shouyou’s hand and hating himself for not being able to do anything about it. 

_ “I mean… the details don’t matter, not at this point, but… so he’s definitely coming here, for one reason or the other.”  _

“God,” Shouyou mumbles. 

Tobio wants to kiss the sadness away, but he can’t when he’s doing eighty down a narrow lane. “We’ll be there at night,” he says instead. “Sundown at the latest.”

_ “Tobio,”  _ says Takeda, in that friendly voice of his when he’s trying to comfort,  _ “I think sundown at the latest might be too late. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I don’t think all of it is going to happen slow.” _

“I know,” says Tobio, and hangs up. 

***

Hajime comes to when his head slams against warm metal, hot sun-warmed car door, and an arm presses against his throat, squeezing the pulse point and making him gasp for air like a fish plucked suddenly out of the water. 

“Hikaru, stand aside.”

Hajime fights for breath.

Hikaru whines. “You said I could use Red Right Eye before you tried it out. It gives me the  _ creeps,  _ Hatsu, don’t you get that? Red Right Eye is better. It’s more wholesome.”

“Fucking  _ fine,  _ then,” says a voice unmistakably Hatsu’s. Hajime wonders where they are that Hikaru can so comfortably push a bleeding body against a car and half-strangle him, Hajime’s feet giving way below him, held up only by Hikaru’s other hand on his shoulders, all while the twins chat amiably like Hajime is nothing more diverting than a cup of morning coffee. 

He hears Takaki snapping the safety on and off on the gun. 

Stars flash in front of his eyes.

Fuck, everything hurts.

“Red Right Eye!”

“I said  _ fine!  _ Fucking do it before he passes out again!” And lord, Hatsu must be really pissed, because she’s seemed so collected until now. Hajime coughs when Hikaru presses harder against his throat, hardly able to think through the pain coursing through his body.

“Eyes open now, SuperStore,” Hikaru pokes him in the cheek with a finger, letting go of Hajime to do so, and Hajime slides down the car door. “Fucking stand up, too, it isn’t hard.”

Hajime’s legs are shaking. He doesn’t remember  _ ever  _ anything hurting like a gunshot wound, a throbbing egg-bruise, a myriad of tiny pains, and a phantom cut in the side of his head hurts now. “F-fuck  _ off-” _

Hikaru’s hand pulls him up again, his thumb pulling Hajime’s right eye open. 

The taller man has flicked his hair away from his eye, revealing both of them for the first time. One is red, the uncovered one, and the one that had been hidden is bright, bright blue. Hikaru bares his teeth, a cheap facsimile of a smile. “Where. Is. Tooru. Going.”

“To find  _ Miyu,”  _ Hajime gasps, his neck burning, his hands flailing to try and push Hikaru away, to get away from the pain of himself, to go back to his store and the graveyard shift, or Oikawa - 

“Yeah, think about Tooru real hard,” Hikaru says conversationally, and then dives through Hajime’s eyes and into his mind.

Not really. 

That’s how it feels.

One moment Hajime is weak, all too aware of his surroundings, the red and blue eyes the only things he can see, and the next…

It’s like someone’s pushing his mind backwards, two hands reaching through his pupils, grabbing onto Hajime on the way and pulling him back, back, back. “Ooh,” hums Hikaru right next to Hajime in the darkness of Hajime’s life. “Childbirth. Fun times, SuperStore!”

Hajime would reply, but he sort of feels like he’s going to die, so he doesn’t. Hikaru pulls him forward, even stronger in Hajime’s head, and Hajime wonders whether that’s because of Hikaru’s own talent or because Hajime perceives him as so much stronger than he really is.

“Boring,” Hikaru whines. It’s Hajime reading a book to the younger kids. “Jesus, SuperStore, where’s the fun stuff? The sex and the drugs and the rock and roll?

_ Forward.  _

Hajime and Tetsurou speeding through the village on their bikes, waving to Mrs Whiteman in the general store, revving their engines at the Nelson kids that squeaked with excitement. 

“Boring,” tuts Hikaru. 

_ Forward.  _

Hajime and Akane picking apples in the orchard, scrambling up trees with wicker baskets looped around their shoulders to place the fruit carefully into, Uncle Kyou reversing the Landrover into the trees so the littler ones can pick their share.

Hajime’s eyes burn at the familiar scene. It’s getting around to autumn soon - will Akane go home and help with the harvesting, the apples and the field of wheat behind the houses? 

_ Forward.  _

Tetsurou and Tetsun and Hajime around the back of the bicycle shed, skipping school with Terushima, Hajime’s eyes ghosting around Yuuji’s with clumsy, childish attraction. 

“Ooh, that’s a little more interesting,” says Hikaru.

_ Forward.  _

Night, now, Terushima’s bedroom all too familiar, the covers kicked back by bare legs and awkward teenagers trying out new things with apologies heavy on lust-burnt lips, sweat glowing on skin lit by glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling. 

Hajime wants to cry, but he doesn’t know if he can, and that hurts more than all the injuries. Hikaru cackles with laughter, cruel, mocking. 

_ Forward.  _

Hajime staring at blood on his boots, a motorbike lying by his feet like a napkin crumpled in the hand of someone long-gone, too shocked to cry. 

“Mm. Scarring emotionally,” comments Hikaru conversationally. 

_ Forward.  _

The closed-casket funeral because there wasn’t enough of Tetsurou to scrape off the floor, Uncle Kyou spitting at Hajime with the venomous fury of a grieving father, Hajime weeping quietly into his sleeve.

“Just  _ stop it,”  _ Hajime bites out. 

_ Forward, ever forward, relentlessly forward.  _

Hajime with hands shaking as he comes down to breakfast and nobody looks his way.

_ Forward.  _

Hajime pulling at Akane’s shirt, trying to get him to talk to him, Akane walking away as casually as if Hajime is just a ghost of wind. 

_ Forward.  _

Terushima telling Hajime it’s too much, the stress is too much, while Hajime stares emotionless at him, too stressed to care.

_ Forward.  _

Akane… and then college, lonely and fucking exhausted, and then Tooru and Hinata and Kageyama and Tetsurou and everyone all in one massive overload that brings Hajime so close to passing out once more.

“Stay awake, you idiot, or Hatsu’ll use the old man’s key on you,” Hikaru growls, and begins to rifle through the last section with businesslike blankness.  “Hm. Oh, you assholes, I knew you were at those stupid kids’ flat. Oh… the map. Hmph. So  _ that’s  _ it. See how easy that was, huh, SuperStore?”

Hajime is pulled backwards, back towards his eyes, Hikaru’s ghosted hand around his arm. God, that hurts.

“She’s where the old two live,” Hikaru says to his sister as Hajime’s legs give way and he slides down to the ground, legs like burning jelly. “Do we keep him?”

Hatsu nods, and Hajime wonders whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Tooru’s going to be there around the same time as us. He didn’t have to stop to root around in some dumbfuck’s head.” 

Hajime isn’t awake when Takaki manhandles him into the car. 

There’s an increasing chance of Hajime not ever being awake again, if the sticky floor and the soaked-red-blood of his shirt are anything to go by.

***

Ukai sits in the passenger seat, letting his partner drive the chuggy black car to their home. His right leg bounces uncontrollably; his teeth nip at the knuckles of his left hand; his eyes skate from the phone they’ve just hung up to Takeda’s face to the passing scenery to the phone again.

“Keishin,” says Takeda eventually, breaking the heavy silence, “Calm down.”

A dam breaks.

“They said the kid was coming to find his sister, Ittetsu. They were  _ really fucking certain  _ of the fact. So either I hallucinated that kid dying on our bathroom mat-”

“Keishin-”

“Or something freaky is going on and somebody’s not telling someone something, and if that’s the case,  _ we could die,  _ ‘cause… remember Yana? Remember old Kageyama and the baby? Remember how we didn’t do anything to stop all of that?”

“Keishin-”

“We could have, that’s the thing. The Hinata kid still doesn’t know about Yana… and neither does the Kageyama kid. Ittetsu, what if we’re fucking up big-time here?”

_ “Keishin, calm down,”  _ Takeda says authoritatively, their stupid car bumping along a pothole in the long-forgotten road. Not for the first time Ukai thinks about how easy it would be to jerk his arm, knock into Takeda, send them both off the edge of the cliff… and he clenches his hands tightly in his lap. Takeda continues, apparently not having noticed Ukai’s movement. “Nobody ever told us anything back then, and we just kept doing what we did. Now, nobody tells us anything, and we keep doing what we do. You think half the people in the 121-129 would be alive if we didn’t?”

“Not the point! The point is that the girl and the kid-”

“The point is that there’s always going to be stuff we don’t know about, and the only thing we can do is to stop people from dying. That’s what we’ve always tried to do.”

Ukai grits his teeth. “We’re the oldest. They call us the  _ Old Guard,  _ Ittetsu, and I’m only thirty-five. We should know about whatever the fuck crazy shit is going on.”

“And?” Takeda taps the car radio with his free hand, trimmed nail clicking against the plastic casing. “Bokuto clearly has no idea what’s going on. You know, I reckon the only person in this world that has the whole of the picture is-”

“It’s Oikawa.”

Takeda hums gravely. “What he chooses to do with that information is his decision.”

“I wish he’d hurry up and share it with us,” grumbles Ukai, unwrapping his hands from each other to bite at his knuckles again, a habit he started to try and quit biting his nails and now a habit he can’t seem to stop. 

Blood trickles, a thin, saliva-watered-down stream down Ukai’s hand, curling around his wrist.

Takeda tuts. “You were meant to stop doing that,” he says, like he said about the fingernails, like he said about the fingertips. Ukai figures he’ll just keep finding something else to damage, and Takeda will keep stopping him, until they both grow old in the white cottage by the cliffs.

“‘S not half so bad as what some of the others do,” Ukai says sullenly. “I bet Oikawa isn’t the healthiest.”

With a giggle, slightly hysterical, Takeda stops the car outside their house. “None of us are, at that, Keishin. You do caves, I’ll do cliff.”

“Hoi! Ittetsu, you always slip!”

“You do caves, I’ll do cliff.” 

“But-”

“Caves. Cliff.” Takeda gets out of the car after he makes sure the handbrake is firmly applied - the cliff edge is so close that it would only take Ukai three long strides to drop himself over the cliff and into the unforgiving ocean below. “Don’t worry so much. If we check this, then we’ll be ready for the department brats.”

“If they come, huh,” mumbles Ukai, although he knows the older man is right. He just wishes it were  _ him  _ climbing the cliffs, although Takeda is better at it.

Takeda shrugs out of his jacket, draping it on the wooden gatepost leading into their ‘garden’. (A few meagre plants that Takeda has pleaded out of the harsh, rocky ground.) “Back in an hour for a cup of tea, and then we’ll try the number Shouyou gave us, okay?” He smiles slightly. “Okay?”

Ukai keeps his own jacket on - the caves at the base of the cliffs are cold and chilly, even though the exercise from the walk down will make him want to take it off. The cliffs that Takeda will check are the faces themselves, covered in crags and crannies. It won’t be the first time someone from the department - Hatsu and Hikaru’s mother, the thought of whom sends shivers down Ukai’s spine - has hidden in one of the larger crooks of rock.

He watches his partner’s head vanish down the cliff they live on before he sprints down the spiralling pathway to the cave systems, fighting his way through the scrubby, brushy woodland that grows around Watchton and the base of their clifftop land. The caves.

They give Ukai the creeps. 

Well he remembers finding the girl, right about to fall over the edge of the cliff, eyes blown wide, hands clutched onto something tightly.

Well he remembers waking up in the morning to find her gone.

Well he remembers sniffing the air, using the talent he’s always been more than content to keep under wraps. Well he remembers the smell of lingering death. Well he remembers searching for the body, but half-heartedly, just in case they found it in the woods.

Well, shit. 

As Ukai suspected, the caves are empty. Seawater left over from high tide drips from the roof and down the back of his shirt, making him hunch his shoulders and scowl at nothing. They’re like a warren down here, these caves, but unless someone was supremely stupid they wouldn’t try hiding too deep. 

Everyone’s read Tom Sawyer. Everyone knows what happens to people that get trapped in cave systems. 

Ukai takes a few paces back once his check of the damp caves is complete, craning his neck to see Takeda clinging spider-like to a rocky outcrop near the top of the cliff, long fingers gripped for purchase. To Takeda, of course, the cliffs are easy. 

Not so to Ukai, though he’ll never admit it, and Takeda knows anyway. He begins the long trek up through the woodland, darkening as the afternoon fades.

There’s an uneasiness settling deep in his stomach, a feeling of complete  _ wrongness,  _ but he can’t pinpoint what it is. It bubbles in his belly nonetheless, roiling and boiling and building, and it’s probably just the radio broadcasts coupled with the phone call, but he doesn’t like it.

Twenty miles away from Watchton, a black car with fogged-dark windows speeds slightly as the driver sees the signs pointing to her destination. In the back of the car, semi-conscious, wounds beginning to painfully knit together, there is a boy

Ukai’s boots sink slightly into the damp mud of the grass verges. He reaches the cottage just as Takeda is slipping through the gate, lighting the kitchen, a glowing beacon of safety in the fast-encroaching darkness. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but to Ukai at least, the sunset always seems to come a few hours before everywhere else to this house on the cliff. 

“Nothing,” says Takeda, pecking Ukai’s cheek, already dialling the number. “Oikawa had better pick up.”

“He will,” Ukai says, returning the kiss on the tip of the elder’s nose as he toes off his boots. He still feels uncomfortable for some unknown reason.

“Hmm. He better. Put the kettle on.”

It feels inherently wrong to be making a cup of tea while something so urgent is happening, but that’s always how Takeda goes, especially on the jobs they do around here nowadays. 

A few miles behind the black car is a dusty red Ford Focus, doing well over the speed limit. Its driver is alone, and his face is streaked with grime and blood, the only patches of clear skin being in the tear tracks his unwiped eyes have provided. His phone rings. He wonders whether to ignore it or not.

Ukai drops a teabag into the pot and stirs.

An hour behind the Ford Focus is a grey Citroen that’s seen better days. The driver is almost asleep, his passenger long since succumbing to the sandman, although this exhausted state robs them of none of their ferocious drive.

He hands Takeda the mug with the most tea in. 

And over the ocean like an invading army rolls the mist. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: clearfullydearfully love mE
> 
> ok i hope that was ok   
> also school starts soon  
> so if i slow update  
> im soRRYYYy  
> (remember to review)


	15. night falls and there is no ceremony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. did you know after 2 days of school I am no longer able to form sentences?? so we're going back to once a week for the last few chapters, again, apologiesss

Dusk falls on Watchton without ceremony.

“Leave him in the car,” Hajime hears Hatsu instruct. “He’s just going to slow us down, and anyway, we need both of us to search. Takaki, go with Hikaru. I’ll red anybody I see from the 121-129.”

“‘Kay,” says Hikaru easily. There’s the sound of car doors opening and slamming shut, and then from outside: “Will I lock it?”

“What do you  _ think?  _ Of course lock it. He’ll get out otherwise, get lost in the woods. Fall off a cliff,” Hatsu replies, voice dripping condescension. There’s the clink of metal against metal, and then the locking mechanisms click into place. Their low voices drift into the distance. 

As soon as he thinks he’s alone, Hajime opens his eyes, running a mental hand around his body to try and work out what the hell is wrong with him. 

Okay.

There’s a wound in his head, but Hajime doesn’t think it’s that deep. It bled a lot and ached a lot, but if it were deeper, wouldn’t he be… what, like, brain damaged by now? Okay, so his head is basically fine. His face hurts, but he thinks that’s from being hit by Hikaru, and the same would apply to the funny way his breath has to slip through his throat. Really what concerns him is his side, because he  _ definitely  _ remembers being shot there, and he definitely remembers bleeding out on the floor, and yet he’s not…

Well, he doesn’t  _ feel  _ like he’s dying. When Hajime read the comics and watched the films, they always said dying was a lot more painless and a lot more enlightening.

He feels anything but enlightened. Mostly he feels sore.

“Fuck… okay,” he mumbles, the thing in his back pocket still digging into him. “Okay. Okay, stand up Hajime, you know you can.”

He actually doesn’t. He remembers - vaguely, but he remembers - Hikaru having to hold him against the car, cruel fingers bruising his throat, Hajime falling down as soon as the support was gone. Somehow he doesn’t think he’ll stand. 

“Stand up, Hajime, you know you can!”

Well,  _ that’s  _ something he doesn’t need.

Hajime groans, face against the floor. “Please go away. You’re  _ dead.  _ I don’t even know - why the hell I can see you. You’re a figment of my imagination.”

Makki whistles through his teeth, leaning back in the seat occupied by Takaki mere moments before. “You can do it, Hajime! Of course I’m not a figment of your imagination. You have the key, so there’s this  _ thing  _ with Tooru’s head, ‘cause if there’s one thing Tooru is good at, it’s messing with his own head. And other people, the bastard. I told you, didn’t I? I’m  _ Tooru’s  _ Makki, not your Makki, so I don’t come from your head at all.”

“You make no sense,” Hajime breathes. The mere action of moving his hands to his sides and trying to haul his body up makes him pant for breath, and he can’t hold it for more than three seconds before he collapses back down. He’s in so much fucking  _ pain  _ it hurts to exist. 

Makki hums. “Nah, man, I make perfect sense if you had all the puzzle pieces and actually knew what was going on. Still, you got the truth, which is what you wanted, right?”

“I got fucking  _ shot,  _ man, I didn’t get the truth. They just shot me, they didn’t tell me nothing, they-”

“Double negative. They  _ didn’t  _ tell me  _ nothing.  _ They told you something, right, so hurray! Oh, and sometimes the truth hurts.” Makki lounges, superior, and Hajime has never wanted to punch someone so much as he wants to punch Makki right now. 

Hajime glares at him and tries once more to push himself upright. There’s little light in the car, so Makki looks even more sinister in that bloodstained blue button-down with brains bubbling out his head, staining the blue with red and grey. “No, the truth doesn’t hurt, but getting shot hurt like a bitch! And it’s all your fault, you stupid…”

“I came from Tooru.”

“Don’t blame him for this-”

But now Makki is quiet, deadly, a grey, puffy hand slamming into Hajime’s shoulder and knocking him against the back of the front seats, roughly arranging him into a seated position and pulling a scream from the back of Hajime’s abused throat. “Don’t tell _ me  _ about assigning blame,” he says as calmly as Hajime would if he were ordering coffee.

Hajime groans. His head has bashed against the seat, making him see stars, and the rough movement has torn whatever healing his side might have managed in the few hours he’s been out. “ _ Fuck-” _

“No, shut up, listen to me.”

Hajime is quiet. He’s not sure he’ll survive being cocky for a third time today. 

“Okay, good, fucking hell.  _ You  _ can’t tell  _ me  _ what to do or who to blame, because  _ you  _ are just like  _ me  _ and we both loved Tooru, I loved him like the brother I never had, what a fucking cliche, and we both loved Tooru and neither of us knew what was really going on and Tooru never bothered to tell us and we both ended up getting killed by Hatsu and Hikaru. You see?”

Hajime shakes his head. “You told me you worked for them. You told me you-”

“ _ Post-mortem, _ ” says Makki with a sad smile. “They don’t have a fucking clue that I’ve been hanging out in Tooru’s head and doing my level best to stop him doing anything else.”

“So  _ why are you here?”  _

Bizarrely, Makki pats Hajime’s hip. “You have the key now. Fuck me if Tooru didn’t just give it to you -  _ I  _ had to ask, and I didn’t even know what it was, and I didn’t even die with it on me. Consider yourself lucky.”

“But - but what’s the key? Will you just-” Hajime swallows around the bruises, feeling tears prickle the corners of his eyes - “Will you just tell me instead of speaking in these weird riddles all the time? You said you were on my side, but it doesn’t fucking feel like it-”

“I said shut up,” Makki says carefully.

Hajime sighs. “There is  _ literally  _ nothing you could do, short of killing me, that would be worse than this. Everything hurts, you get it? I don’t  _ care,  _ just tell me!”

But now Makki looks anxious, like it isn’t meant to be going like this. “You aren’t meant to - what are you  _ you’re not meant to do that you’re not meant to think that Oikawa Tooru Oikawa Miyu the rabbits you’ve been a bad boy and bad boys kill rabbits!”  _

Something strange is happening. As Hajime watches, terrified but somehow calm, Makki’s dead features  _ glitch,  _ changing for a fraction of a second to a slim girl with hair the colour of Tooru’s, one eye closed, pale cheeks dusted with freckles, lips red with blood, something else, something unidentifiable, in her eyes.  _ “Bad boys kill rabbits bad boys deserve to be killed with the rabbits don’t you know Mr. Yana trusts me? Don’t you know? Don’t you know?”  _

“Jesus Christ,” Hajime whispers.

Makki - the girl - Makki - the girl - shoves themself forward, gripping tight to Hajime’s shoulders. “Ask him,” they hiss desperately, “Go and find him and ask him about Crisco the rabbit and what I - what she - I - she - the concentrator! The letters! Ask him it all!”

And then 

_ Jesus Christ  _

_ what have i done _

Starting with the face, the skin drips off their suddenly skeletal frame, landing on Hajime’s own bare arms and ripped jeans, burning like hot wax. The clothes run into the skin, the hair runs into the clothes, but the eyes stay whole, bloodshot and begging Hajime for something he knows he can’t give them. Slowly, like cake mixture pouring into a pan, the body melts onto Hajime, two eyeballs bouncing off his lap and rolling to bounce off his hand.

He dry heaves.

For a moment, anyway. 

But he’s not eaten anything so there isn’t anything to bring up, and anyway it’s a tiny bit stupid to feel sickened to his stomach by the waxy pieces of a  _ somebody  _ that was never real. The liquid has hardened onto Hajime’s skin now, cracking when he moves it.

When he finally hauls himself up, moaning with the pain, he picks up the eyeballs. One is grey; the other is hazel. 

He puts them in his back pocket, feeling metal under his fingers, and realises he’s been locked in. Of course. He couldn’t get out even if he  _ was  _ fit enough to walk.

Hajime slumps on Takaki’s seat, pieces of melted body breaking as his shirt folds, and stares blankly into the darkness of the scrubby wood at night, holding a bronze coin in his sweaty palm. The coin is simple, hardly decorated, twice as big as a nickel, with a rough blue stone in the centre.

_ Ask him it all! _

_ What are you so afraid of? _

**_You._ **

***

Tooru gets a phone call five minutes away from Watchton, a glance at the number telling him what he already suspected: the Old Guard are calling him, and he can only hope they won’t try and send him back to the radio station or the clinic or…

Or anywhere that isn’t here.

_ “Tooru,”  _ says Takeda when Tooru picks up,  _ “How far away are you?”  _

“Ten minutes, maybe less. Don’t tell me to turn around,” Tooru says as calmly as he can. The sun is just vanishing behind the cliffs; he can see the white cottage, a small dot on the horizon but there nonetheless. (Is that the stupid car he sees, beginning to chuff down the winding road to town?) 

_ “I wasn’t going to. Meet Keishin at the store in five. We’ve checked caves and cliffs, which means  _ **_if_ ** _ they’re here they’re in the woods already. If they’re not, I’ll see them driving in. I have the binoculars.”  _ Takeda is measured, not at all his usual self, overflowing with quotes and bubbly surplus words. That’s how Tooru knows Takeda’s  _ really  _ been freaking out.

He swallows. “Okay. Okay.”

_ “Tooru.”  _

Shit.  _ Shit.  _ He knew there would be something else. There’s always something else. “Yeah?”

_ “I feel I should tell you this before something happens. Ten years ago Keishin and I came across a girl looking worse for the wear. She was wearing a lot of red, I remember that, and a red pendant. She stayed overnight, took three packets of painkillers, and left before we woke in the morning, and she told us her name was Miyu. We assumed she’d died a long way from here - trust me, she was on her way. She stopped us from calling the clinic, and for some reason I felt as though that was the right thing to do while she was beside me. Only when she left did Keishin and I realise we’d sent her to her death… our minds felt clouded. Tooru, Shouyou-” _

“I know what Shouyou said,” Tooru bites out. He feels terrified, like he’s driving into the jaws of a trap, too late to turn around. “I don’t care about that anymore. They have Hajime.”

_ “The new kid?”  _

“My - yeah. Yeah, him.” 

When Takeda next speaks, it’s careful, like he’s talking to someone not quite there in the head.  _ “Tooru… just know that some things have to happen. And… and whatever happens, don’t blame yourself. For-”  _

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Tooru interrupts, thumb hovering over the red button. “I’m going to get Hajime. That’s what’s going to happen. Just me and-”

_ “Shouyou and Tobio are coming.”  _

Tooru drops the phone down the side of his seat. “What the  _ fuck?”  _ He screeches once he’s recovered it, so loudly that Takeda must recoil at the other end. “Shouyou? And T-tobio?” 

_ “Just thought you should know. General store, two minutes.”  _

It’s Takeda that hangs up. Tooru throws the phone in the passenger seat, hating  _ everything  _ and mostly hating the two kids that have attached themselves to him like… like a pair of stray dogs, or something, adoring him even when they shouldn’t, and - 

Damn. He doesn’t need another pair of people to feel guilty for when he listens to the remembrance broadcast on the 121-129. 

dont think that what the hell is wrong with you

General store, two minutes. Tooru drives harder, parks outside the store in a minute, and bangs his head against the steering wheel, the horn sounding loud in the deserted town. Watchton goes to bed with the sun and rises with it - he can see curtains twitching back in annoyance to see what the racket is. 

Ukai is three minutes late, in the chuggy black car, cursing his way to his store. Tooru sits with his back against the cold glass of the door, his eyes closed, his head buried in his knees, which is how Ukai finds him. 

“Tooru.”

“I know, I’m an asshole, I know, this was all my fault, I  _ know,” _ Torru says before Ukai can say anything more. Weirdly enough his eyes feel drier than they should - if it were another time, he would be bawling his eyes out by now. His throat feels like a desert, painful, like someone’s choked him. 

Ukai offers a hand, hauling Tooru to his feet as easily as if he were made of air. “Not your fault, Tooru. Blame the department, yeah? Blame whatever  _ started  _ it, not whatever gave it a jumpstart on a frosty morning, if you get my meaning. C’mon inside.”

As the blonde man unlocks the general store, Tooru rubs his neck. “That was my fault, too. I started it. My fault.”

“Nah, it wasn’t,” Ukai says. He sounds like an animal trainer trying to coax a particularly timid animal into the light. “‘Course it wasn’t.”

“You wanna know what I did? Can’t blame you. I’m looking for my sister,” says Tooru, following Ukai into the darkened store. “I suppose Shouyou told you that.”

It’s been ages since he’s been here - usually Ukai and Takeda stay around here, take care of the woodland activity and any paranormal creepers that blow in from the ocean, updating the 121-129 only over the air when they call in. They’re… well, Tooru won’t say  _ teachers,  _ because Ukai is too irresponsible and Takeda too bubbly-happy, but they’re  _ mentors.  _ Many a member of the 121-129 has phoned Ukai and Takeda in the middle of the night to get the best advice of their life; many a member has been saved by Ukai’s instinctive reasoning, or Takeda’s calculated risks. So Tooru… when Ukai starts probing, he can’t say he’s surprised.

“Shouyou did say that. Mentioned some girl called Miyu, which is funny,” Ukai bends behind the counter, reaching for something. “You know why?”

“Because Miyu’s dead,” says Tooru tonelessly. “No need to dance around it. She’s dead.”

Ukai straightens up, a Winchester rifle in his left hand, the strap dangling down. “Yeah, kiddo, she’s dead, which is why I’m a  _ tiny  _ bit confused. How in the hell is it your fault if some girl died a decade ago, and why are you looking for her now? She could be anywhere.”

“She’s here.” 

“How in the fuck do you  _ know?”  _ Ukai ducks his head to adjust the strap of the Winchester around his shoulders, the barrel facing down. “Listen, Tooru, I’m all about rescuing your boyfriend-”

“Then let’s do that  _ first,  _ Coach!” Tooru hisses angrily. Even now, even in this ridiculous situation, he blushes at that last part of Ukai’s sentence. “Come on. I know the answers to the questions, I just… Miyu is gonna stay dead, but for now, Hajime’s alive.”

Ukai pats his shoulder. It’s authoritave. Sometimes, Tooru forgets Ukai and Takeda had a life before they moved to Watchton, before they became the oceanic protectors. Ukai used to do the 121-129 gig. 

All the same, Tooru has never felt so afraid of a job in his life. 

(the hinata thing the hinata thing)

(the rabbits huh tooru the rabbits) 

( _ hajime)  _

“C’mon, then, kiddo. No point taking the cars. Leave ‘em. If these assholes are anywhere, they’re in the woods, that’s what I reckon.” Abruptly he swings the rifle around his shoulders again and hangs it around Tooru’s neck. “You take this, kid, I get this feeling you’re gonna need it.”

“And you don’t… smell? Smell anything?” Asks Tooru hesitantly. He doesn’t  _ want  _ the rifle, but as he and Ukai walk out of Watchton up towards the woodland just below the cliffs, he feels a tiny bit more powerful with the weapon slung around his shoulders. “Do you?”

Ukai sniffs the air. “No death. Not yet- sorry.” 

“Don’t be.” 

Tooru’s feet are beginning to sink into the mud of the wood track. It’s not used often, he can see, with only one set of bootprints in the muck. 

And car tyre tracks.

“Coach,” he says, and his voice is shaking horribly, “Coach-”

“I see it, kid. But you knew they were ahead of you, right?”

Tooru clamps his trembling hands over the strap across his chest. “Y-yeah. I knew that, I knew that, I knew that.”

“And if they’re the kids I think they are, they’ll have made three or four tracks, just ‘cause they  _ know  _ someone’s coming. No point following ‘em. They’ll have taken themselves out of the car anyway,” Ukai says. 

Tooru pulls his lip into his mouth, biting down hard on an already-bitten patch, grounding pain and the taste of metal filling his mouth. “I’m taking the middle tracks. I think…”

“Kid-”

“I lived with them for seven years, Coach, don’t you think I know them?”

Ukai’s face in the dark moonlight looks even graver, their only sound the background noise of distant waves crashing angrily against the cliff rocks. “And I watched them kill most of my friends, Tooru, don’t you think I know them? You don’t know this. Ittetsu and I never told you lot. But Shouyou and Tobio… their parents were in the Old Guard. And those little animals-”

_ that never smiled would it be better if they smiled  _

“-Those little animals killed Kageyama Kuraka and Kageyama Rika and took his kid away. They drove Hinata Yana mad and then kidnapped his kid and killed his wife and made  _ him  _ kill himself. I don’t want them-” 

_ that never smiled would it be worse if they smiled _

“- to get you to die. Any of you to die. Okay?”

Tooru feels pale. He spits, blood and spittle hitting the muddy ground. “Okay,” he says, and it doesn’t sound as insincere as he feels. “Okay.”

Ukai nods. “I’ll take the side track. You take the middle.”

It’s odd, but as one of the last remaining members of the Old Guard paces off, stride wide and confident, Tooru feels like some kind of baton has been passed in the speech preceeding their split. “Okay,” he whispers to his white knuckles. “Go find Hajime. Go find Miyu. Go find your key and  _ fucking kill them all.”  _

That makes him feel a tiny bit better.

Not much. 

The waves crash against the cliffs, slowly carving out a new cave. Over millions of years the pressure of the water wears it down, creating new rock formations out of the unique way the waves have crashed. There is even a cliff face in Ireland, made of chalk, which erodes too fast - some people built a church fifty feet from the cliff edge a few hundred years ago, and now the church stands in danger of toppling over the edge, into the sea.

The caves at Watchton are limestone. Calcium carbonate. It doesn’t wear away so fast as softer rock, but nevertheless some of the best, most intricate cave systems are limestone. 

The caves of Watchton are a warren. 

In the caves of Watchton, people die. 

The last set of people to go into the woods at Watchton come in a car that used to belong to the radio hosts. They park beside a red Ford Focus and a black chugger of a car, get out, and look at one another. 

“They’ve gone into the wood,” says Tobio. His face is pale, but resolute. “I know they have.”

Shouyou nods, chewing on the side of his thumb, ripping skin that will hurt when he presses it against anything for the next few days. “And then?”

“And then we’ll find them,” Tobio begins walking, not bothering to lock the car. There’s nothing worth stealing. His hand winds down to wrap around Shouyou’s smaller hand, which is shaking like a leaf. 

“And then?” Shouyou has to make his strides wider to accomodate Tobio, wondering if he should voice his darkest fears, wondering if it’s worth it. “And then, Tobio?” 

“And then we help them.”

“Help them with what?”

Tobio shrugs uncomfortably, feet struggling to find purchase in the slippery mud of the beginning of the track. “Whatever they need help with. Shou-”

“Just wanted to make sure,” says Shouyou, voice high and damp, “That we weren’t walking into the woods where we  _ know  _ three murderers are wandering around trying to murder us, with no idea where either of our friends are, no idea if one of them is alive, and no idea what the other one is actually trying to do.”

“Shou…”

“I said I was just making sure.”

Tobio swallows around a fist of pain in his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s me as much as you that wants to be here… We’ll be fine. We’re always fine.” Shouyou squeezes his hand, thumb pressing over the vein, fingers curled around Tobio’s, and Tobio feels suddenly as though he is carrying the weight of Shouyou’s life with his own.

_ We weren’t fine when you almost died,  _ he doesn’t say. 

He watches his breath crystallise in the air, and keeps walking, no longer caring how deep he strides into the mud. 

One more...

Takeda Ittetsu enters the woods ten minutes before Hinata and Kageyama do, his breath ragged, his eyes wild, clutching his binoculars.

Now he’s trying to find…  _ something.  _ Preferably not the department - he doesn’t think he’ll survive that meeting. Takeda is nothing if not cautiously optimistic, but it’s late at night and he’s tired and he doesn’t know where Keishin is and everything they’ve ever stood for, their way of life, could be ruined in one go by the children 

_ that didn’t smile would it be worse if they smiled _

The children that took, took, took, giving nothing back.

So he wanders in his pink socks with pigs on the toes, the oldest of the Old Guard still left living, forty years old and painfully aware of his responsibility to the whole damned lot of them. 

So they’re all there, now. 

Every single one of them.

The pieces are placed. 

The match is about to begin. 

_ white moves first  _

_ protect the king  _

_ swarming up the board, no cheating, no cheating! _

White moves first - the white of burning heat and the white of the pain in a beating and the white of bleached bones. So out they have gone, out of the car, the three white pieces, and have arranged themselves onto the playing board with cold, white calculation.

Black takes its turn. The black of growing soil, of comforting night, the black of autumn nights drinking hot cocoa and telling stories, wrapped in dark, heavy blankets. To the inexperienced player, it would seem as though black has the upper hand, with twice as many as the white. 

Yet…

In chess there are eight pawns and only one queen, and a queen can brush eight pawns off the board with the back of her hand.

Yet…

If a pawn reaches the other side of the board, he is Queened, and then the stakes are evened somewhat. 

It isn’t a perfect metaphor. Few things are. 

But it’ll do.

It’ll do. 

***

Hajime picks dried flakes of the thing that had been Makki and the girl off his skin. He feels as though he’s going to vomit, but he can’t, not on an empty stomach, not after having lost as much blood as he has. 

He feels strange.

Dimly, he knows he’s in a considerable amount of pain, he has to be, but he only feels it through a wall of something soft and fluffy. It’s like he’s watching a TV show where someone’s just been hurt and he feels a tiny twinge of pain in sympathy, but of course, he hasn’t actually been hurt.

Except that he has.

He feels strange. 

Maybe he should be in more pain. After all, it was only this morning - 

_ Only this morning!  _

\- Only this morning that he’d gone to get gas, only this morning he’d woken up with an angel, cocoa-halo hazel-eye, in his arms whispering in the raspy voice of someone heavy with sleep, an eyelash on his cheek for Hajime to brush off, only this morning he’d been paying for three canisters of black sloshing gas to take him to go find Miyu- 

_ Is it Miyu? What did Makki say?  _

\- Only this morning he had phoned the number, gotten shot, gotten strangled, been put through more pain than he ever thought he would in his  _ life- _

And Hajime doesn’t hurt as much as he thought he would. Oh, he hurts, he hurts plenty, ice-fire-white waves washing through his blood, but not as much pain to make a gunshot. It’s like an equation: pain = wound, neatly balanced, the pain to pay off the debt borrowed by the wound. 

So what’s lending him energy?

(In Hajime’s pocket, along with a pair of mismatched eyeballs, the bronze blue coin glints quietly. Energy is energy, and as it works, silent, it turns the chemical energy to heat and kinetic, burning warm to touch and buzzing ever so slightly. Hajime doesn’t notice. He’s too tired to notice.) 

So what’s lending him energy?

God, he wishes the car were open.

He wishes he’d thrown out the post-it when Hikaru scrawled the number on it all those nights ago. How many days has it been?

Not long.

He shouldn’t be this invested. It’s a week, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, and he can’t imagine going back to his room above Akane’s bakery, nobody talking to him for weeks at a time, his parents calling him to cry and berate over the phone line.

No. No, the 121-129 is better.

What was it Tetsurou had said?

Something pretentious, probably. He usually did.

With a sigh, Hajime fell back against the seat, giving up on the waxy flesh-melt for now. It doesn’t matter how gross he is, not when he’s been lying in a dripping, drying puddle of himself for most of the day. He’ll just wait, that’s what he’ll do, and he’ll take whoever comes along next. If it’s the department, he doesn’t care. If it’s Tooru…

He supposes he cares a little.

Hajime looks out the blackened window, picking at his jeans absently, trying not to move his head or his side in fear of another wave of hurt rolling over him. 

The wood reminds him of the forest back home, three miles or so down the road, a twenty-minute bike ride. Scrubby, bristly trees around the border of the wood would give way to the taller, spreading oaks and sycamores, and in the autumn Hajime and his siblings and cousins would catch the conkers and the acorns. They’d build a fire out of fallen bracken and twigs and Akane’s firelighters, roasting the acorns, dipping them in butter if they had any. They’d poke holes in the tops of the conkers, threading them through with wool or string, and play at conker-smash until one of them got a conker to the head and a bruise like a blue egg the next day.

Except… the wood is more sinister, and it has nothing - or only a little - to do with the darkness currently surrounding it.

Hajime wishes he were back in the old woods, smashing conkers against each other and eating butter-slippery roasted acorns that burnt the tips of their fingers to touch. 

He wishes Oikawa were here. 

In the car, of course, doors locked, he can’t hear the waves beating a steady rhythm against the cliffs, but - 

Tooru can. To him, it sounds like the heavy beat of war-drums from a terrible Western film, signalling the plucky hero’s death. Or, possibly, the antagonist. 

It depends on your point of view.

The car tracks he’s following just keep going, making him think - hope,  _ hope,  _ **_hope_ ** \- that he’s picked the right set of tracks to follow, that at the end of the path there’ll be a long black car and - - hope,  _ hope,  _ **_hope_ ** \- at the end of the path there’ll be Iwaizumi Hajime, looking disgruntled, calling him some sort of insulting nickname,  _ alive.  _

The woods creep him out at night. The wind whispers secrets through the five-pronged sycamore leaves, the waves beat the continuous beat against the rocks, and he keeps thinking there’s something behind him.

It doesn’t help that, because of his… unique upbringing, Tooru knows that there could be.

_ I see ghosts, and I don’t care if you think I’m mad, because they all do anyway  _

And Tobio and Shouyou are somewhere here, Tobio and Shouyou that follow Tooru with dogged hero-worship for some reason he’s never been able to fathom, because he’s not  _ worthy  _ of the praise and attention. He’s a wimp. He let the department control him just as he let Miyu control him, just as she convinced him he’d killed the rabbits when it was all  _ her,  _ and Tooru couldn’t even bring himself to tell Tobio and Shouyou because he loves them. 

He fucking loves them, okay, too much to tell them what he knows - that he wasn't worth the worship a younger brother gives to his elder.

Tooru wonders if Hajime’s younger siblings adored him.

He wonders if Hajime would be happier if he’d never met Tooru.

Tooru knows that, if he were Hajime, he certainly would.

His feet slip again in the mud, freshly churned by the car wheels, the four-wheel-drive Takaki installed finally coming in handy for this godforsaken scrub of a wood. 

Night has fallen on Watchton without ceremony. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also im not replying to reviews because it takes too much time when i could be writing the next chapter, so im very sorry about that too! I do read every single one and do a weird dance when they're amazing as they always are. you guys are great at the good vibes. (please give the good vibes to this chapter.)  
> see you next week! (hopefully before bt if not im so sorry)


	16. a brief interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry. I've been pretty much doing nothing the past fortnight but throwing up and sleeping, so this is whatever I could type up in between those times. Sorry a lot for this one.

Years ago, Ukai remembers, he and Takeda gave the radio to Yana and his wife for a week so they could go on a job, a more personal one, hunting after the thing that had killed Ukai’s grandfather.

(Ukai’s grandfather, the  _ true  _ founder of the Department of Investigative Abnormalities. The first generation.)

It was a long, tall thing, made out of shadows and nightmares and the thoughts people pushed to the backs of their brains, and it hid behind woods and abandoned playparks and came out at night to kill. It only killed people who thought shadows and nightmares, and whose whole  _ heads  _ were made out of the sorts of thoughts people pushed to the backs of their brains. (Ukai always thought it had been a mistake for the thing to kill his grandfather.)

(He thought wrong.)

It was on that week that they found the thing, hiding in some woods. Woods, trees like bleached bones branchless into the sky, leaves like crisp flakes of skin falling at their feet.

The thing almost killed Ukai. Takeda brained it with the butt of his pistol and they both buried it in the centre of the forest, far, far away from shadows and nightmares, and people whose whole  _ heads  _ were made out of the sorts of thoughts people pushed to the backs of their brains. 

The wood below their cottage is not that wood.

Nevertheless…

Ukai lets his hand drift over the bleached-bone-branchlessness of a nearby tree. A femur, perhaps. This wood is the scrubbly sort of wood, the unshaven beard of the cliff, and the residents of Watchton tell odd stories about it when winter falls. 

God, he’s cold. He remembers soil shifting under his shovel, and wonders just how deep they dug that hole, before remembering that incident was in another country entirely and therefore didn’t count.

He wishes he’d stayed with Tooru.

That kid. 

_ There’s something about that kid…  _

“Hey, Hikaru? Hatsu?” He calls half-teasingly just to break the silence. 

***

The car is locked. Of course the car is locked. It wouldn’t be Tooru’s life if the car was handily open, and it wouldn’t be his life if Hajime looked in any way like he wasn’t on death’s door. He’s heaving great big sobs of irritation more than sadness, despair - he’s come so close, so he’s not going to give up just yet. 

When he was a kid he smashed a jar of seedless strawberry jam on the carpet of their den. It dried a hard, brown crust, impossible for Miyu  _ and  _ Tooru to get out, and that’s how the interior of the car looks right now. Like strawberry jam, except it’s all coming from Hajime, who is slumped in one of the seats, eyes fluttered shut. 

Tooru is such an idiot. 

And he feels  _ awful  _ for thinking about the key at a time like this.

(But he gave it to Hajime… and if the twins found it, and if they found Miyu first… using the concentrator with all three keys inside it would be  _ horrendous. _ The world wouldn’t even have time to blink.) 

He needs Hajime.

“Hajime! Iwaizumi, Iwaizumi,  _ please,”  _ he thumps on the windscreen, glass shaking beneath his fists, and then remembers - 

Rocks.

By his feet.

Why is he such an idiot?

He feels the tops of his fingers peeling away from the atumps of his fragile nails when he heaves up the largest rock he can find. The pain is excruciating, making him hiss and stagger with the weight of trying to protect his abused fingertips. There are burnt lines of red along the split of nail and skin.

Let them. He doesn't care. He has a roll of tape in his backpack for this very situation. 

The wood watches him silently as he moves. Countless eyes, not judging, just remaining still in the breeze, looking at someone leaking like a sponge soaked in water and blood, carrying a rock like it'll save his life.

Tooru’s arms shake. He holds the rock a foot over the windscreen - he's nowhere strong enough to actually throw it - and hopes the momentum, the weight, will break the glass on its own.

Please.

Please break.

The glass - 

_ Smashes like a flower in bloom, millions of tiny fragments crystallising, ice on a warm spring morning, a vandalised winter panorama, smashes like a flower in bloom.  _

\-  The glass. 

Some of it flies out and hits Tooru’s face and bared forearms, hurting like the nip of nettles in summer. Something hot runs down his cheek, a burning tear, and absently he sticks his tongue out to catch the copper cut on the end and taste the metallic sting. 

No glass, or very little, has flown into the back seats. 

Thank God.

“Hajime?” Tooru whispers. “Iwaizumi?” 

Someone groans. “Fuck, my head hurts.” 

And suddenly Tooru is fucking  _ elated _ , the happiness starting disbelievingly at the bottom of his fingers and spreading like wet ink throughout his body. “You're alive!” 

“Barely, but yes,” says Hajime. He sounds wet and soggy, somehow, slurred - but not ever how bad Tooru would have thought he'd be like. He's  _ alive.  _ They can deal with the rest later. “Hey, where is-” 

“No questions. What's happened?” Tooru ssks as he crawls through the windscreen and finds something warm and human to hold. Hajime’s hand. “Can you move?”

“I got shot earlier and… um, I'm not really sure what else. Fucked up a lot. But I'm not as… sore as I know I should be. Does that make sense?”

_ Too much sense, _ thinks Tooru grimly, and hates himself a tiny bit more for ever thinking the key was a good idea. What did he do? Who has to answer for what Tooru has done to every single innocent person here tonight? “A little sense.”

“And I met a friend of yours,” Hajime says as Tooru begins to try moving them both towards the smashed windscreen and out to freedom. 

“Huh?” Asks Tooru absently. He's a little more preoccupied with moving over the glass-coated glovebox than anything else.

Hajime winces. “I - ow - a friend. Says he's Hanamaki. Say he told me the truth, Tooru, or his -  _ shit -  _ his version of it. What would you do?” 

Tooru feels his blood cooling in his veins. “H-Hanamaki? He died, Hajime, he died ages ago and there was no - I mean, just… you’re hurt. Where are you hurt? What did he do to you?”

“They fucked with my head a bit, and I got shot. I told you.” Hajime’s voice is strangely insistent and level despite the fact that he’s dripping pieces of himself all over the car interior as Tooru maneuvers them both out the windscreen. Is it the key?  _ What has Tooru done?  _ “I don’t mind about that, ‘cause it doesn’t hurt. Tooru, what happened? Where is Miyu? Why does Hanamaki think she’s dead?”

He snaps. 

_ snap _

“Oikawa Miyu died eleven years ago,” Tooru says, tugging Hajime through the windscreen. “By my reckoning. And no, I’m not going to tell you about it now. We’re in a tiny bit of a situation, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I noticed,” says Hajime calmly. He doesn’t notice his shirt tearing on a jagged cut of glass - Tooru doesn’t point it out. “I want some answers, Oikawa.”

_ Fuck.  _

“Can we just… deal with this first? Then I’ll tell you. Properly. I promise.” Tooru, unlike Hajime, still seems to have feeling in his body, and almost screams when a shard enters his leg. It feels like it scrapes deep into him, deep to the bone. “Fuck!”

“They’ll come back if you don’t quiet,” Hajime mumbles. “That’s what  _ she  _ said.”

Tooru looks closer at him and sees for the first time the dilated pupils and red highlighted cheeks of someone entering a heightened state of panic. Okay, okay, okay, that makes more sense than if he’d been possessed by something, which Tooru wouldn’t put past these woods - this situation - at this point. “I - right. That’s what she said. Can you walk?”

He helps Hajime slide down the bonnet, feet landing in soft silty bracken. “Yeah, I can,” Hajime nods, a few seconds before his legs buckle beneath him and he sprawls beside the muddied wheels. 

“No, you can’t.”

“G-give me three minutes, I can do it in three minutes, I can,” pants Hajime, spitting out a mouthful of mud.

“No you can’t.” Tooru hauls him up by the elbow, gingerly, roughly as Hajime stumbles against him. In the moonlight he looks  _ worse,  _ like someone that’s already died, white skin and red splotted lifeblood. “Hajime, I’m so so sorry, you can’t-”

“‘- go, we need to stay together-”

“Tobio,  _ please,”  _ chokes Shouyou. “I need to - we need to find them before-”

Pig-pink toes, forty years old, he hears the voices and stops.

“Hinata,” mumbles Takeda Ittetsu, wiping his hand through his pepper-salt hair. “Kageyama.” He wishes he’d put on better footwear, not Ukai’s old rubber boots with the holes in the heels, but he’s here now with mud seeping into his socks and there’s nothing he can do. “Hinata? Kageyama!”

From far, from faint, in the warren of tree-trunks: “Takeda?  _ Teach?  _ Is that you?”

“Shush! Red Right Eye!” Takeda calls, hoping the wind won’t steal his careful cry from him. He just needs the kids (they’re kids, they’re still young, still hopeful) the kids to be okay, to survive this even if he doesn’t. Which means shutting up.  

No reply. A crack-snap twig, a breath of exhaled panic. They’re coming closer, but they’ve heeded his words, and Takeda can relax for just a moment.

He likes this work better with Keishin by his side. Keishin, dependable, trustworthy, dangerous in the way a sleeping hawk is dangerous, in the way a restful crow is dangerous, still for now but with the hint of warning.  _ Stay away from what is mine.  _ The fun in the beat of his heart is still here, cracked and glazed with fear, but it would be better with Keishin here. Takeda would feel less like live bait and more like - 

_ The oldest of them all, the Old Guard come to mentor-  _

“Takeda,” gasps little Hinata Shouyou, clinging onto his arm with coughs he tries desperately to muffle. “Oh, thank God. I thought we were the only ones here.”

“D-don’t be stupid, Shou,” says Kageyama Tobio. His hand shakes. His other hand is tangled with Shouyou’s, but his cheeks are apple-pink with fear. Blue eyes wide. He always had eyes like Kuraka did, back when he was a baby and the Kageyama family came up to the radio for a week to spend the summer holidaying around the One Hundred Twenty. Big blue eyes. Blue eyes wide.

“Are you both all right?” Asks Takeda, kneeling to Shouyou’s height, eyes watery brilliant through round glasses meeting hazel ones full of fear. “Are you?”

“ _ We’re  _ fine. We’re looking for Oikawa,” says Shouyou. There’s a little bead of wet at the end of his nose, a little red around the rims around his eyes, a little lisp to his voice. He cuddles into Tobio, looking infinitely younger than his nineteen years. “Have you seen him?”

“I talked on the phone about half an hour ago. He’s with Keishin,” Takeda assures, although he’s not altogether sure the pair of them are still together - he wouldn’t put it past them to do something ridiculously foolhardy, like  _ split up  _ or something. 

Please, God, no. 

“Shouyou, you need to-”

“ _ I’m fine-”  _

“Shouyou-”

Takeda puts a hand on one shoulder each. Pushes a little. He’s older, after all, still the oldest in the whole damn 121-129. “Okay, okay, calm down. Stay with me and we’ll find someone, and…”  _ No. Don’t finish that sentence.  _

“If we find Hatsu and Hikaru? Takaki?” 

“I’ll kick them  _ really hard,”  _ Takeda says, and is rewarded with a laughless laugh from Shouyou and a huff of dragon's’ breath on the cold air from Tobio. 

It’s the best he can hope for, really. 

He wants Keishin.

He wants to go home.

(A small, secret part of him wants to stay adrenaline-full and pumping blood, fear frozen in his eyes like crystalline ice, for the rest of his days.)

(He doesn’t allow this part to speak.)

(He can’t afford to.)

***

The wood, the scrubby wood, begins to thin by the time they start talking again. Tooru has swept Hajime into his arms in as non-dramatic a way as possible, because Hajime is going over on his ankles and his eyes are leaking slips of exhaustion that clean the grime on his cheeks in long, damp streaks. 

“I didn’t tell you the truth.”

Hajime, with his arm around Tooru’s neck, scoffs. “Y...you think? I guessed that. I guessed it.” His breath hitches every time Tooru moves. He feels awful. Something warm is soaking into his sleeve, the scar of the handcuffs returned or something else, something he can’t bring himself to care about.

***

The caves make no noise but drip-drip-drip, the centre of a mass of lines on a map. A slim, dark hand lies on a circular  _ thing  _ made of bronze, unaware of the water trickling over its knuckles.

It’s been unaware of anything for eleven years, now. 

 


End file.
